Scout Now

Being a dead shot is important. So is interpreting buck sign accurately as the rut unfolds. In fact, there are lots of skills a hunter needs to hone in order to get a crack at a whitetail buck, such as reading topographic maps accurately or sexing deer tracks in the snow. And there are plenty more of varying importance. But ask any consistently successful deer hunter how he bags a buck season after season, and he'll tell you the key to his success begins with post-season scouting.

Here are twenty-four post-season scouting tips--things that you can do or learn to identify to help you punch your buck tag this coming season--and every autumn thereafter.

The Big Picture

1) Visit local taxidermists, gun and archery shops and hunting clubs, and quiz state and national big-buck rack measurers to learn where the bigger bucks are being shot in your state. Often, one county will boast the most buck kills while a second region will have a lower harvest number that includes more mature bucks.

2) Start scouting soon after the season closes, and don't worry about spooking deer. You're not hunting, you're trying to get a handle on the local deer population. With the leaves down and maybe snow on the ground, search for terrain features deer are likely to use as preferred travel corridors, such as gentle slopes leading up and down hillsides, spurs and saddles between ridges, plateaus above farm fields and brush-choked ravines.

3)Bucks walk parallel to geographical features such as stone walls, hedge rows, irrigation ditches, fence lines, creek beds, and that imaginary line that separates one species of vegetation from another, like the gap between a standing corn field and a wedge of oaks. In big-woods settings, the most obvious of these is the confluence of a block of hardwoods and softwoods such as spruce and hemlock. Look for rubs and rub lines to help confirm your suspicions.

4) Seek out natural bottlenecks along these travel routes, and mark them on a topo map or in your GPS unit for future reference. This would be a good time to build ground blinds or trim shooting lanes, depositing cut limbs some distance from the proposed stand site. Plan an approach to your blind or tree carefully, taking ground cover and prevailing winds into consideration.

5) Go ahead and penetrate known and suspected bedding areas, looking for beds, rubs and droppings, as well as entrance and exit trails. Notice the proximity of these safety zones to agricultural fields in farm country, or old apple orchards, swamps, clear-cuts and mast stands in forested country. Figure out how a buck might enter or exit the bedding area undetected. What role does the wind play?

6) How do you know if a bedding area is preferred by does and fawns or big bucks? Bucks generally bed alone, whereas does and fawns usually bed in a group, and their bed size is smaller than that of a mature buck.

7) Don't be fooled by extra-large beds found near preferred late-season feeding locations. Mature bucks, partly to save calories, will generally bed as close to food as they can, and in the thickest cover available during the cold winter months. As spring approaches, they'll retreat to more distant, safer locations.