Scouting means success

I've read tons of articles in various publications about scouting. The main trend seems to be long distance glassing and deep dread of offending the deer by walking through the woods. Some people say that once a buck sees you in its territory he'll immediately go nocturnal or vacate the area. This may be true.

But who cares? Are you really trying to get in Pope & Young? Or, like most of us, would getting your first doe with a bow be a damn good start after four or five years? Mongo and Tard scout all year and right through the season. And maybe we do miss some 199 & 9/8ths Yope & Pung that we could of shot with a 69.99% let-off and sworn 25 affidavits and had our Ma's tell em' we're darling little boys and we wouldn't fib not ever. But for most of us regular schmoes that's just a far off dream.

So get real and scout during the season, before the season, after the season, and around the season. If you have the dough get one of those infrared cameras to snap pictures of the object of your desire and then call Mongo and Tard because we would sure like to borrow it. Scout till it hurts and here's why. As the season flies by what the deer eat and the paths they take to get there change. Hunting pressure can dynamically alter the chunk of woods your dinner travels through. And here's the bonus - radio collar studies have shown that deer circle around hunters just like pheasants in the field; especially in areas inhabited by people, which outside of the Arctic circle is damn near everywhere in North America.

Now I'm not tellin' ya to bring your boom box and have a pig roast with all of your friends under your stand an hour before you climb up your rickety old death trap. Go easy, use scent control just like you're hunting. Take all the normal precautions. And remember this -it takes about three days for deer to feel like their living room is safe again. Mongo and Tard picked up that tidbit from a hunting show and it has worked well as a rule for us. The only area we stay out of during season is the beds, not so much because we have any scientific evidence that it would scare all of the deer away but more because it's bad mojo (forgive the witch-doctor side of me). We want to know where the freshest deer crap is, where the prints with dew claws are this week, which food plot they're working and that means glassing is nice, it helps, but we want to know the exact tree bucky will walk by during legal.

Our best advice is to get to know every square foot of your hunting area early in the year (spring/summer). Then, continue to scout during the season and if your hot spot goes dead pick up and move to where the deer are showing current activity. This will also make you a hard hombre for bucky to pattern. That's right, while you're trying to figure out what they're up to they already know what you're up to because they rank us on smell and hearing and it's their turf. A good rule is that after three hunts with no deer sightings it's time to rest that area. Keep moving to where you think the deer will be and eventually you'll be right.