By Alex Comstock
Spring scouting is no doubt important, and it’s a part of the puzzle you must put together to help you be more successful as a deer hunter. I want to make that clear from the outset. But, with that said, I also feel that some hunters out there put too much stock into spring scouting. How? Well that’s what I’m aiming to explain in today’s blog post.
1. It’s ONE Part of The Puzzle
The first way that you might overvalue spring scouting is by simply not realizing that scouting in the spring is one piece of the pie or one piece of the puzzle, etc. In short, though spring scouting is clearly important, there’s still a lot of other things you should be doing throughout the year to help you be successful as a deer hunter. You do your scouting in the spring, then come summer, you should be running trail cameras and glassing ag fields (if you live in ag region), then more scouting during the season. There are other things that you should be doing as well, such as running mineral sites, creating mock scrapes in the fall, and taking the information you learn in the spring to apply to other times of the year.
What you have to realize as a deer hunter, is there are so many things that you can be doing to help you be more successful. I think this is widely known by most hunters, but when you’re actually spring scouting, it can be easy to forget all of that and therefore make a lot of decisions solely on what you uncover during the spring. If you can refrain from this, and add what you find to the puzzle, to help put the rest of the pieces together, then that’s where you will take a big step forward.
2. It’s The Only Time You Scout
I mentioned this briefly under point number one, but spring SHOULD NOT be the only time of the year you scout. I’d venture to say it’s the most popular time to scout though. You can see everything that was laid down in the fall. Rubs, scrapes, trails, beds, you name it. For as important as spring scouting is, you really should be scouting year round. If spring is the only time you’re scouting, you’re way overvaluing it. There’s a lot of information you can learn about bucks or deer on your hunting property by scouting during the other times of the year as well.
To be most effective, make sure to scout throughout the year, and not just in the spring .
During the summer, trail cameras and binoculars are my favorite scouting tools. Unlike spring where I put on as many miles on the boots as possible, I don’t want to disturb as much, therefore glassing and trail cameras do a lot of the scouting for me. When it comes to hunting season, a lot of people quit scouting all together, which can be a big mistake. Think of spring as your baseline scout. Throughout the rest of the year, you can either confirm or deny what you find during the spring. Maybe in the spring you find a great bedding area with a lot of rubs. It can be hard to determine whether or not bucks are using that during September or November. You can run trail cameras nearby, on trails going into and out of the bedding area early in the fall, and then based on what you figure out, determine what time of year it’s being used mostly. Spring was the baseline scout, and then you get to take it a step further later in the year .
3. You Don’t Envision The Fall
I think this could go down as the biggest reason why you might overvalue spring scouting. When going out this time of year, it’s quite easy to take things for face value and get overly excited. Example; you find an unreal bedding area filled with rubs just on the outside of an oak flat. A lot of deer hunters will note that, and return the following October expecting it to be a great spot because of what they scouted in the spring. But here’s the kicker, if you don’t envision the previous and future fall while scouting, you could be selling yourself short.
Make sure to ask yourself how the sign you find will apply to fall.
To help clear up this point, let’s use the same example I just covered. You find that great bedding area on the outside of an oak flat. So, instead of just making note of that, think to yourself why was that area loaded with bedding sign and rubs? What was going on in the fall that had an effect on that. It was most likely because the oaks were dropping acorns. What you should do now is go scout the oak flat. Look for acorn caps and see if you can identify that. Odds are you’ll be finding those and now you’ve just put another piece of the puzzle together. Now, when it comes to the following fall, when you return if the oaks aren’t holding acorns, odds are the spot won’t be nearly as good. If they are though, you’ll have the knowledge from the spring to help you decide on where and how to hunt.
Conclusion
Like I’ve already mentioned, spring scouting is unequivocally an important part of deer hunting and scouting. Just don’t get into trouble and think it’s the ONLY time to scout, because it’s simply not. It’s a part of the puzzle, not the whole thing. Take the information you gather during the spring months and use it to put together other pieces throughout the year. Do that, and your spring scouting efforts will help you come fall.
