Stories
Spring Deer Scouting for Big Fall Bucks
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4/1/2010
Deer season may be over, but it's never too early to get a jump on next year's deer season. Spring scouting can produce big bucks next fall.
by Mike Strandlund
Research First
Ideally, you’ve already started scouting for next fall. There are fewer more satisfying pastimes on a cold winter’s eve than settling down in front of the fireplace with a map, studying and dreaming of the deer that live where you hope to hunt.
I cover a lot of ground in my whitetail excursions, and consequently I like to start my scouting forays by reviewing the whitetail record book map compiled by the Quality Deer Management Association (QDMA). This map ranks each county in the U.S. for the number of Boone and Crockett (B&C) and Pope and Young (P&Y) whitetails registered. Lately, I’ve focused on the top counties.
After I’ve identified the county I want to scout, I get a plat book for that county. A plat book is a tool vastly underutilized by hunters, I feel. Plat books precisely map ownership of all land in a county. It helps a hunter contact landowners, but more so for my purposes, it identifies public lands that other hunters might not know about. For me, there’s nothing that beats having my own private public land!
I highlight properties on the plat map I want to check further, then find them on the appropriate topo map (usually the large-scale ones like those found in the atlases published by DeLorme). I look for land characteristics that will suggest what the area’s deer are likely to be doing. Topographical features such as ridges and ravines, woods, fields, swamps and strips of cover tell me where deer likely feed, bed and travel. (You can get plat maps from Rockford Map Publishers; and topo atlases from DeLorme Maps.)
