Spring scouting

So here is the first ? I want to throw out & get your ideas about.

What are you looking for when you start to do your spring scouting?


There are 2 main things for me: 1- get the big picture of the piece of land, meaning I try to walk it all and see how it all connects and what are the little things that will effect deer movement
2- try to find the out-of-the-way/obscure places where big bucks may hang out during the fall. By walking all the ground I can find little nooks & crannies where a big buck may live. You can go into all those spots now and not worry about bumping the deer out like you would in the fall. Big bucks love those out of the way, small places where they can control everything. By finding them now you see ways to hunt by them without letting them know you are there till it too late. Last year I had this, I found a small little draw that was really thick & had lots of rubs. Then in Nov. I got trail cam pictures of that giant 9 coming from that direction shortly after dark. Although I was never able to get by it & hunt it with a bow (it is nearly impossible to bow hunt), but aided the guy gun hunting & he killed that giant 9 (green scored 182) out of that tiny little draw. My scouting & analyzing of that tiny draw no doubt aided in him killing that buck. If he would have tried to walk through there in the fall to check out that draw, he would have blown that deer out of there and probably never even saw him.

Shed hunting 2011

I went down there in March with my son & a friend for a day & half to do some shed hunting. It was tough because the weather wasn't great at all and we were trying to cover miles of land with 2 guys and a 4 year old. It was a fun time, but not all that fruitful when it came to finding sheds.

You can't beat walking around the woods this time of year, you can see all the sign from last fall and get a great feel for the big picture of things.

Here are the pictures of the 2 we found.

Info about 2011 season

At this point it looks like we have all 5 leases full for 2011. I'm really looking forward to seeing all the bucks we get this year.
Besides just the leases, we now also have a really nice old farm house to stay in this fall. It is like 6 bedrooms with 3 baths and very, very nice. It will create a deer camp atmosphere with the guys from the leases.
I was also able to sign a lease agreement for 5 years on the main 4 farms, so it is exciting to know we will be able to go down there for years to come!!

My plans for 2011 are to spend as much time as I can down there on my lease.
What are your plans for the fall of 2011??

Trail cam Pics

We put a trail camera out for one week over 1 scrape and here is what showed up, not bad!!

2010 Pics

Here are a few of the pictures of deer that were killed in 2010. We didn't hunt all the leases in 2010. There are a few bucks that were killed that I don't have pictures of on here.
This was Brent's daughter on her first ever morning hunting, it was only about an hour after daylight, can't beat that!!

2009 & earlier pics