Hunting big vs hunting small?

[fairchaser]

If you have a large tract to hunt, how do you scout/hunt that property? Do you get a big picture perspective and understand the deer movement on the entire property or do you focus on a couple of key spots and learn every tree? I see advantages to both strategies!

 

[102]

In every piece of land, there are favored areas for deer activities. Food, shelter, travel, bedding. But these areas can change significantly with changes in the deers environment. Weather, pressure, food sources, etc.

So it is important to understand how fluid hunting is on any piece. And to be honest, time and experience tells the real story.

The more time (boots on the ground/in a stand) one can spend in an area, the better. But there is a trade off for that as well. And that trade of is BAD. human scent (where negative association is connected) may result in an area becoming avoided by deer.

So if absolutely necessary, I plan on a "one and done" approach to all new areas I hunt when I scout within a couple weeks of an actual "sit".

And I do the "sit" within hours of my scouting unless I have time to wait a couple weeks.

I always assume that if I find fresh sign, (food, trails, droppings of 3 ages, (very dry, damp, green and slimy), then I better be there in a tree, when the deer come back and sniff around and figure out they are being hunted.

But to give you a direct answer to the question, and assuming I am hunting chasing phase of the rut, I look for natural or man made bottlenecks with sign of travel. And wether it is downed trees, big rocks, old home places, water, hollers, skirted openings, bluffs, or abandoned cars, I don't quit scouting until I find this.

It takes a lot of looking. And this is the reason why I do this in January, February, and March.

 

[Ski]

Personally speaking I do better hunting small. I have to break big properties down into small enough pieces that I can get my head around and keep mental track of. With time and experience I can begin to piece together a big picture but in the beginning I have to take on only what my brain can handle. Trying to figure out a new large property as a whole is just too overwhelming and causes a lot of missed critical details.

So my approach like paint by numbers where the scene is gridded out and I focus on one square at a time. Other people's brains work differently. Some folks can process a lot of information at once to initially see the big picture. How you approach a big place is different for different hunters id suspect.

 

[Iglow]

I looked at maps of the whole area, deer don't know property lines and travel regardless.

 

[philsanchez76]

im basally just a collector of spots. A very few spots stay good year after year, but most of them change based on food sources that year and they all change based on the time of the season. I hunt a large piece of public, but it connects with private all over the place and other than looking at satellite images, I can't really know what deer are doing on the private and that stops me from really being able to put together a fully effective big picture strategy. About the most I can know is if the deer bed on private and travel over to feed on public or vice versa. So, I keep it small and try to have 20-30 spots I can bounce around to each season. A good spot becomes a good spot by either finding fresh sign, hanging a camera and verifying or by an observation sit.

 

[BSK]

WHEN I hunt is the deciding factor in HOW and WHERE I hunt. What I mean is, I'm going to primarily hunt the 2 weeks of MZ season and the first week of gun season. For my area, this is the seeking phase of the rut (when bucks are on their feet nonstop looking for the first receptive does), followed by the peak breeding phase, followed by bucks back to the seeking phase looking for the last receptive does. Because of this timing, I'm going to focus all of my hunting time on travel routes bucks use as they quickly move through the ranges of as many doe social units as possible.

These "seeking" travel routes are heavily influenced by terrain in my area (ridge-and-hollow terrain). So, the first thing I'm going to do is mentally strip away the habitat and focus just on terrain features that are preferred by bucks as travel routes. Once I have as many of these travel routes as possible highlighted, I'm then going to look just as habitat features that influence buck travel routes. Once those are identified, I'm going to compare the two sets of data and look for areas where multiply possible routes coincide with each other. These will become my focal points.

I will be the first to admit that a key part of success for me is to assess my focal points with trail-cameras the last two weeks of October and the first week of November. Of all the focal points I'm interested in, which ones are seeing the most buck traffic this year. This is critical, as some potential travel hotspots are only used under specific situations, such as whether or not there is a good acorn crop. Some potential hotspots come and go in usage for unknown reasons, perhaps influence by past hunting pressure or subtle changes in habitat (for example, that 2-year-old clearcut that had been a primary food source has now grown into a 5-year-old clearcut that is a jungle of saplings and now prime cover habitat).

Once I have a list of focal points and checked with cameras to see which ones are seeing the most usage this year, I will rotate hunting each of them, trying to come at each of them from multiple angles, depending on the wind direction that hunt. But most importantly, I'm going to try to limit incursion into each one as much as possible. Overhunting hotspots is the fastest way for them to become NOT hotspots. By constantly shifting from one hotspot to the next day to day, and not hunting any one spot too frequently, I'm just letting statistics play out. I'm simply playing the odds. By placing oneself in as many high-odds travel locations as possible, during the seeking phase of the rut, and not overhunting any one hotspot, eventually you come in contact with a large number of bucks.

 

[Lost Lake]

On public, I just try to be where other people aren't, and hunt during times when pressure is lowest if possible. That's it in a nutshell for me.

When I've acquired larger pieces of private property to hunt, I'll walk every inch of them as much as I can in February and March. I'm looking for any deer sign from the year before, and I'm looking for terrain and funnels that encourage movement. I'm also looking for hard mast as spots that I'll bowhunt in October, and that's where I'll stay during that month, and avoid other areas. I'm not a big buck killer with bows, just having fun with does. I'll basically "burn" those places, and leave the other areas of the property alone. If a biggun' messes up, that's a bonus.

When the rut starts, I'll try to be super mobile, hunting places that I think the bucks from other areas will be moving through on their searches, ignoring traditional deer sign. On occasion, I'll get tied down to a specific buck, but it's rare for me.

Ideally, that's how I used to do it on private. These days, I've hunted our farm for years, so I'm sure the deer have me figured out way more than I have them patterned, but every once in a while I manage to get a good buck. I don't hunt many other private tracts, but the above has been my approach.

 

[mike243]

Since I quit bow hunting and use my binoculars a lot when scouting I don't stink up a place as bad as when I bow hunted. some area's always have deer traveling through and others are feeding area's.

 

[Snake]

Don't have a large tract to hunt anymore but I'll give one piece of advice " overlooking " great areas . I would tend try and use common sense by going to the furtherest end of the property , thinking most other hunters won't go this route .

The track we leased for several years in Lewis Co. ( 1580 acs ) was a prime example . There was a clear-cut on the south end of the property and although a couple of us hunted this flat top butted up against the CC because it was a good place that wasn't a far walk . Myself hunted the entire property trying to find that " honey hole "and had limited success killing one really good eight point on a very windy day on a still hunt . I killed bucks from one end to the other end of that property but only that one big 8 point I mounted.

Back to that place ...a couple of guys started hunting that one little place right as you passed the CC and killing some great bucks . The reason they hunted it was simply because they were scared of getting lost ...true story . One got lost and was lost all day but found my four wheeler and camped out by it . Coming out one evening right at dark seeing a faint orange color around my four wheeler I thought someone may be trying to steal it . Once I got close enough all I could see was teeth . He said he was never so glad to see somone in his life . The smile will be an everlasting memory in my mind . So him and his hunting friend would set up not far from the road on that flat top and having success. I've been guilty of overlooking great areas by wanting the greener pastures . On a side note I did kill a decent big 6 point on that top one late season .

 

[Shed Hunter]

When locating a new deer in a large area I take the point I initially found the deer as a center. Of course it doesn't always work out to be the center. Then I'll take a radial scouting trip around that center, 1/2-3/4 miles away making sure to hit the best terrain features, leaving trail cams on the best scrapes I find. This almost always has allowed me to find the home range of a buck. When I get the directional confirmation I extend my searching to see how far he goes in said direction (To my best ability)

From a hunting aspect I think this would be beneficial as you know where the deer could potentially be vs what areas may be a waste of time as a deer doesn't necessarily use all of any given property

 

[deerhunter10]

Thats a lot in one question. We have bigger properties that hunt small. And we also have small properties that hunt big. But on our bigger tracts. We break them down into sections. Some sections in my experience will be more productive then others. What makes bigger places harder is options that's a good thing and a bad. You can out think yourself. We set up our big farms with plenty of options for wind. But theres seems to be a couple of just hot spots on all the farms ive ever been on. No matter if they are 20 acres or 500.

 

[megalomaniac]

BIG picture for me only. For me it's critical to understand how and why deer travel throughout the landscape when they want to get from point A to point B. Then I can influence that movement by making fence crossings to my advantage.