Been out there 8-10 times mostly in the same spot with scrapes and rubs. nada. zip. ive been am but mostly pm. any suggestions? gettin a little tired of drivin out there without even seeing a doe let alone a shooter buck. Gunna try a new place in about an hour here though.
If you are seeing a lot of fresh scrapes and rubs where you are sitting now then you may only be 100 or 200 yards maybe more from where you need to be.Try to determine the direction the deer is traveling when the scrapes and rubs were made and backtrack looking for the the nearest thicket(something to thick to walk through)and see if you can find tracks going in or out of it.If not find the next nearest thicket looking for fresh tracks or droppings.Most bucks killed the rest of the season will be killed in or very near there bedding area(thicket).GL
Thank you for the reply. …to clarify, hunting the cleared out plots is kind of a waste? So far my strategy has been just to find areas near water and heavily wooded/swampy parts. Obviously this strategy hasnt been working. So I should be trying to be set up around a bedding area? I am hunting with a rifle so I always assumed I should be in the open plots over anything else. Thanks again for the response …Im very much a beginner and any info helps.
If you want a good hunting forum check this site out.A lot of knowledge and traffic there.
http://www.scoutdoornews.com/forum/
When I hunted with a rifle only, I looked for spots with a long view where I could watch more area. Once I started bow hunting, I looked for the thickest places around. Even though the view is shorter, I see WAY more deer. It was like learning to hunt all over again.
Especially in heavily pressured woods like FMNF, the farther from the road and the harder it is to reach, the better the hunting will be. Try to find the places where humans don’t like to go and where a deer doesn’t have to expose itself. I would not however point you to bedding areas. It’s very hard to sneak into bedding areas without being detected. Feeding areas and anywhere between bedding and feeding areas are what I look for. Look for think little strips of woods on their travel paths. Look for funnels. Forget the big long views.
x2 forget the big views. I riffle hunt out there but am till yetto take more than a 75 yrd shot. Also most of the deer are small and below the grass in the open areas. Find heavy covred draws and places with food. Finding oaks near bedding areas is a huge help. It also seems like a few small patches hold most of the deer. Ive even seen dense deer pockets even with high pressure in some areas. The only open areas I feel are worth sitting are the gated off roads or ol logging cutdowns in low light. THis has prodduced good numbers of deer (not many big bucks) but if looking to fill the fridge is a good tactic especially if you can find one of these gate roads that runs through a swamp.