Strategies for Scouting & Hunting Deer

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Scouting

Scouting is often the most overlooked and least utilized fundamental aspect of hunting. Hunters spend a lot of time, energy, and money on hunting and hunting equipment. One of the easiest ways to increase success while hunting is through scouting efforts.

Remote Scouting

You can use remote resources like Google Earth, ArcGIS, and phone apps to find areas with good habitat. Some hunting apps also help you find landowner contact information, but if that isn’t available, you can explore local tax records to find those details.

This scouting technique will help you find:

Parking lots
Access points
Land features
Potential areas of thick cover
Potential areas of food and water
Suitable habitat for animals
- Oak-hickory woodlands
- Pastures, meadows, and short prairie grasslands
- Edge habitat (the boundary of two or more habitat types)

Field Scouting

After doing your homework with online maps, it is time to put that knowledge to the test with boots-on-the-ground scouting. Now is when you’re looking for deer sign (tracks, scat, bedding areas, scrapes, and rubs).

To learn more about scouting, we recommend our two-part webinar series: Deer Scouting Part 1 and Deer Scouting Part 2, Trail Cams.

Techniques & Strategies

Pay Attention to Bedding Areas

Most hunters concentrate their scouting and hunting efforts on food sources and the occasional travel route, and rightfully so. To identify these travel routes, it is important to understand a deer’s movement from point A (bedding area) to point B (feeding area). Finding a bedding area can be tricky, but it can be one of the best scouting techniques when done carefully and correctly.

Bedding areas are typically undisturbed areas that provide protective cover and easy escape routes for deer. This could be tall grasslands, old fields, thick brushy cover, and even agricultural fields.

To avoid disturbing bedded deer, pay close attention to the wind, wear rubber boots, and scout on windy or rainy days.

Choosing a Location: Identifying Travel Corridors

After completing pre-season scouting and identifying potential bedding and feeding areas, it is important to locate travel corridors and pinch points connecting the two areas. Travel corridors can be easily identified by on-the-ground scouting and identifying constant-use game trails.

While locating travel corridors, look for natural or man-made pinch points and funnels. These pinch points and funnels can be rivers, topography, road,s and a variety of other factors that influence a deer’s travel route. These areas effectively “funnel” deer movement, allowing hunters to predict where deer will move and set up in an ideal spot within range of the pinch point.

Pay Attention to the Wind

One overlooked factor that can quickly ruin a deer hunt is setting up in the wrong direction relative to the wind. Pre-season and in-season scouting will give you an idea of where and how deer are moving through the area. Make sure to avoid sitting upwind of where you think the deer will be coming from — you don’t want your scent blowing right in their direction, as no amount of scent blocker will entirely mask your odor.

Although deer have excellent eyesight and good hearing, their sharpest sense is their sense of smell, so failing to take that into consideration can cause you a lot of hunting heartache. Play the wind. It is worth the effort.

We also have several past webinars about different hunting strategies and tree stand placement, including: