The first time I pulled a trail camera and flipped through deer photos was a magical moment, and it certainly helped spark my obsession with whitetails.
It was a hot, muggy July morning when I walked in the door, SD card in hand, and felt the relief of the air conditioning. I sat down, kicked up the footrest and intently looked at the computer screen while staring down pictures of some good bucks that would be around to chase that fall. My dad and I were pretty excited, and we knew the investment in a trail camera had already paid dividends. That moment occurred more than a decade ago.
A lot has changed since that day, particularly with whitetail management becoming a year-round activity. Gone are the days of showing up on Friday before Wisconsin’s nine-day gun season or only setting aside time to bowhunt just the peak rut. For hunters like me, technology has made it easy to find out which deer made it through the orange army or the vigilance of a neighboring bowhunter.
Actually, finding out what deer survived begins as soon as the season ends. Trail-camera surveys, boots-on-the-ground scouting and shed hunting are critical components to getting a head start on next season. Find a strategy that suits your style, and get scouting.
Trail Cameras
Many hunters wait until midsummer to start determining which bucks survived the prior season. However, a late-season trail-camera survey can be one of the easiest and best ways to locate bucks that survived the season and start finding new bucks for fall. If you have good wintering deer habitat, setting a camera near an obvious scrape is an excellent strategy. Bucks and does alike will scent check the licking branches year-round.
READ: TOP 10 TRAIL CAMERAS FOR 2021
If you can make a mock scrape or place a camera over a natural scrape on a picked soybean or cornfield, you’ve struck gold. If you decide to go that route, make sure the licking branch is extremely obvious so that deer using the field edge or meandering through the crop field can find it easily. Clearing the ground well also helps deer find your scrape, especially if there’s a lot of snow. Since the goal of a late-season or post-season camera survey is to find out what deer remain, don’t check the SD card too often. Better yet, deploy a cellular camera for the ultimate intelligence. Avoid false triggers by making sure that your camera isn’t facing a rising or setting sun, and make sure the batteries are full and the SD card is empty.
Running trail cameras over bait can also be a good way to find out which deer survived and what class of bucks might be around to hunt next season. However, bait piles are not legal everywhere, and they can artificially inflate your herd and expectations for the next season. If you place bait correctly, you will probably attract a lot of deer, and good bucks will show if they’re in the area. Just don’t hang your hat on the photos you receive from a January or February bait pile.
You might think, “But I have no crops or food plots near me, and I cannot legally bait.” There can be a solution if your property receives some winter sunlight. The No. 1 concern of deer is safety and survival, and to survive winter they need to conserve energy. Part of that includes soaking up winter sunlight. If you hunt a property that has steep topography or rolling hills that face south, place trail cameras on logging roads or paths of least resistance in those areas.
If you’ve ever walked the shaded north-facing hillsides of a property in midwinter, you will quickly find out that deer can be nonexistent in those locations. However, there might be a great winter bedding location a few hundred yards away for bucks looking to soak in the winter sun. Backtrack those bedding areas to find where deer travel, and set your cameras accordingly. Again, adding a mock scrape over a logging road or other obvious location is a tried-and-true strategy for a late-season trail-camera survey.
Boots on the Ground
Boots on the ground, or proactive scouting, can mean many things. If you don’t have a slew of trail cameras, thinking outside the box when trying to find surviving bucks is critical. This article focuses on how to find bucks after your season has ended, but, you should always think ahead while hunting the current season, which is always a part of boots-on-the-ground scouting.
Although your neighbors might call you a gawker, driving backroads and packing binoculars might be the only way you can scout for next year’s buck. Out of respect for your neighbors, don’t park your vehicle and glass deer for minutes. Find a prime crop field, glass it for a second, note your observations and move on.
Conversely, if you own or have access to property with a crop field, glassing from a house or sitting in a ground blind can be a great way to find out what bucks survived. As mentioned, if you do not have many trail cameras or want to scout differently, you must think creatively to increase scouting success. Without trail cameras, scouting large crop fields is especially important if those fields aren’t visible from the road.
Some of us have way too many trail cameras and have almost forgotten what it was like before cameras scouted for us. However, finding deer tracks and trails is still an effective strategy for post-season scouting. With good snow cover, finding deer trails and fresh tracks is simple.
But if you experience a brown winter with little snow cover, getting on various trails and finding fresh tracks might be the only effective way to find deer sign. Instead of always relying on trail cameras, spend half a day walking trails and finding fresh tracks. That might tell you a lot about late-season deer movement and the kind of habitat bucks need to survive. Even if you have several trail cameras, walking around a property before setting them can increase the odds of finding the best camera locations to acquire great pictures of surviving bucks.
Shed Hunting
I wish there was an appropriate way to express my enjoyment of shed hunting, but I’ll leave it at this: If you scout for bucks and want to get a head start on learning if a specific buck survived, you need to be a shed hunter. There’s no greater confirmation that a buck survived than finding his shed antler. I usually have limited time to shed hunt, but I put a high priority on it for several reasons. In addition to curing my cabin fever in late winter, searching for shed antlers forces me to scout, ask questions and think differently about the property I hunt as I walk its steep ridges and valleys. Knowing I can walk everywhere and not be on pins and needles, afraid to bump deer, helps immensely.
When you find a shed, it’s wise to ask questions. Why was this buck here? Was he walking or bedded? What kind of wind or visual did he have that made him feel safe? When I stopped running up to sheds and picking them up right away, I learned a lot more about deer behavior. It’s fair to say that more than 75% of the shed antlers I’ve found are just off the crest of a ridge or down a long ridge point, facing south and in a wooded bedding area. Those ingredients sound like a pretty good place for a buck to bed in-season, too. You won’t always find a shed where it makes sense, but many times, the location will make sense, and it’s worth finding out if you can find that buck in the same place come autumn.
Conclusion
Finding out if a buck survived the season is a task that you can accomplish in many ways. Although trail cameras are the popular choice for their convenience and ease of use, in-person scouting and shed hunting during winter and spring will provide a new perspective about deer movement and behavior. Merging those strategies together will give you the best chance to locate surviving bucks.
Don’t wait until summer to start your next deer season. The season begins as soon as it ends. Find your scouting niche, and discover how fun it can be to get a head start on next year’s bucks.
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