Post Season Scouting Plans

Seasons are over, or drawing to a close soon. What are your post season scouting plans? Immediate post season is my favorite time to scout, & fine tune tree stand spots. Of course we can forget shed hunting too.

My goal is to get into some new areas and look for trees. One track of land I am falling in love with is old mining land. It has lots of brush and from what i can tell climbing trees are the minority. I want to have this place all figured out with funnels and climbing trees by spring.

I like to scout when ever I can.. Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall. You found Your spots and note them down. This way You can see what You found in the other seasons and add to them what You find later on. Also when I scout I take a climbing treestand with me. This way I can get a Birds eye view of the area.

I plan to walk the whole 20k ac WMA I hunt & try to find every cow oak that is at least 1 mile from the nearest road. I will also try to find some deer desert type trees such as honey locust bean trees or persimmon trees. After this is done I will do some map study on the computer to determine the best trees looking for ones that are near thickets & far from access rds. Also make notes on access routes & preferred wind directions. This should keep me pretty busy.

The swamps should be frozen over, so I can walk out to the islands and find out which ones the deer have been escaping to and then devise a plan for next year based on wind direction and probable food sources. Prepping trees is necessary because the areas I hunt have gated roads that will be closed from the end of February until the beginning of next archery season!

I got a call from a guy who uses another web BB I frequent,and he offered me some tips on an area where I might have a real good chance to take that public land pope and young I`m looking for. I plan on taking a look at that.

I plan on scouting all the way up to mushroom hunting time.
After that, I don't do too much until late summer, then I stay out of the woods until mid-Sept.

Snow on the ground and the winter is long. The deer yard up in my area. The patterns change entirely from one season to the next, but you get an idea of the terrain that funnels and the areas that hold the deer. Small herds that migrate long distances and shift their home range from one season to the next. Still I will be in the woods with my lab when it is below zero looking for the few deer that are up here. Happy scouting:)

There's an area I haven't been to in a while. Rocky Gutter WMA is a very large and swampy area and I've never really seen anyone in there during bow season. I think this is and area I have to concentrate on this year. Sooooo I'm going to do a little shed hunting /scouting this month in there to start. Then some hiking/scouting in there until about August. I'll pick out my tree's and load them into my GPS. I will also have my Guido's web by then and will hang out in these spots and observe. I may also put out a camera or two.