Early season scouting strategies

[fairchaser]

Just curious if you have a specific early season strategy. Do you go for that mature buck or wait until the pre rut. Do you glass bean fields in the afternoons? Are you looking for heavy doe trails or for those faint trails with large deep tracks. Do you seek out persimmon trees or water holes? Do you go back to familiar spots and hang cameras or sit over salt licks? Love to hear your strategy.

 

[muddyboots]

I scout fresh acorns with lots poop around and shoot does in bow season. Last week of October I move to our proven mature buck spots and start hunting them.

 

[muddyboots]

Imo early season is much better in the afternoons but since I love watching football with my family on the weekend I don't hunt many afternoons

 

[Mike Belt]

A little of all of it. The entire time I'm in timber I'm glassing for acorns. I zip through my familiar areas where I have prior experience with deer movement looking for sign. I'm checking field edges for tracks.

I really don't ever expect to stick a big buck It hasn't happened in all these years anyway. Really the sign I see isn't indicative of bucks or at least I can't tell if it is. Short of laying eyes on one this time of year it's kind of guess work as to whether sign seen is from a buck.

 

[tree_ghost]

Personally I am very selective in my approach of a mature buck in the early season. I like to do a lot of glassing in the beanfield's right at dusk to try and pinpoint a pattern of buck location where the buck is exiting the timber on a somewhat regular basis. If I notice a buck I want to hunt becoming more regular in his exit point from the timber I will place a series of trail cameras back into where I believe he is coming from. If I catch them on camera within the first hour of dark on his feet then I start to come up with the strategy of how to make an attack on him. If I can formulate a bulletproof entry and I have the wind in my favor I will most definitely try to kill a mature buck in the first few days of the season. In my opinion it is a high risk but high re-ward strategy. There is definitely the risk of more going wrong in than the possibility of it all coming together but on the flipside of that coin you have the opportunity to be able to surprise a mature buck with his first human encounter and hopefully his last incounter of the deer season. Now I admit I have never been successful in doing this but that will not stop me from trying. After the first week I move to doe patrol.


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[catman529]

Creek crossings, travel to corn or beans, red oak acorns with good deer sign, etc. I do check fields in the late summer before season. Already done that once or twice this year.


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[280longshot]

I hunt fresh sign around white oaks and proven travel corridors but last year I never drew my bow with several hunt sightings of around 20-25 deer.
I've killed my share of does with a bow just can't seem to connect with a mature buck.
We generally see at least one or two prior to season opening around the fields but they seem to disappear.
I don't like putting pressure on an area where I've seen them and will only hunt that area maybe twice with a bow.
My bow hunting is mainly observation hunts with minimal pressure.




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