Went a winter scouting....

[zeus1gdsm]

So I took a hike though the local state land I put some time in on this past season. On one of my last trips I found another trail head and another trail and I wanted to connect the 2 on my GPS.

What was supposed. To be a halfa'd walking small game chit chat with some friends and some coffee. Ended. Up being me lonely self.

So 3 items were on the list... Test my new bibs and jacket in sub20* weather..... Test fire the wife's 597 after replacing some broken internals.... And do some trail mapping.

All were successfull. Gear was warm... Gun shoots fine now and I connected the 2 points...

While walking I came into a valley in the woods I had been sitting all season.. And omw in on this new trail there were. 3 heavily used deer trails crossing the trail about 50 yards apart... All heading north/south. This excites me as it tells me that I was sitting in a good area.. Just on the wrong side of the valley. Also in this predominantly pine forest this valley has hardwoods and I found 2 large areas over 40 feet in diameter where the deer had ravaged the ground for acorns.. Another good sign.

I was about run parralel one of the game trails to see if it was leading to shelter or food for the purpose of picking a new spot for next year. When the wife called and cut me short...

Being 3 miles from the truck down twistiting paths I ended up bushwhacking straight through to the road and having a nice 2 mile walk back to the truck....

So I'll be off again in the coming weeks to finish the scout and track those game trails to find a new spot to setup...

On the downside I found 2 more branching paths I'll need to GPS.

Gotta love the snow... Shows things u may not have seen otherwise.

Happy scouting y'all.

[Doc]

I went scouting yesterday in the kitchen. I took a glance out the window, under the bird feeder, and spooked a couple of does.....lol.

 

Well, to be serious, I don't take winter scouting very seriously. Most of my needs for patterning deer are aimed at bow season. And what is going on right now has absolutely nothing to do with what will be going on in October or November. In fact, it really has very little to do with what will be going on in early parts of gun season. Food sources are totally different. Bedding areas do not have the cover that they have early in hunting season. In fact what I have found is that as soon as the snow cover becomes somewhat permanent, deer don't even follow their fair-weather trails. They almost seem to go out of there way to ignore those trails. Also the more severe cold weather puts new requirements on the deer who are now into a survival mode. They have new concerns about shelter and protection from winds and other factors that were not necessary when the climate was much different during bow season.

 

What can be determined with winter scouting is some rough gauge of how much of the population may have survived the gun season.

[bigpaul]

Damn cell phones!

[Lawdwaz]

So I took a hike though the local state land I put some time in on this past season. On one of my last trips I found another trail head and another trail and I wanted to connect the 2 on my GPS.

What was supposed. To be a halfa'd walking small game chit chat with some friends and some coffee. Ended. Up being me lonely self.

So 3 items were on the list... Test my new bibs and jacket in sub20* weather..... Test fire the wife's 597 after replacing some broken internals.... And do some trail mapping.

All were successfull. Gear was warm... Gun shoots fine now and I connected the 2 points...

While walking I came into a valley in the woods I had been sitting all season.. And omw in on this new trail there were. 3 heavily used deer trails crossing the trail about 50 yards apart... All heading north/south. This excites me as it tells me that I was sitting in a good area.. Just on the wrong side of the valley. Also in this predominantly pine forest this valley has hardwoods and I found 2 large areas over 40 feet in diameter where the deer had ravaged the ground for acorns.. Another good sign.

I was about run parralel one of the game trails to see if it was leading to shelter or food for the purpose of picking a new spot for next year. When the wife called and cut me short...

Being 3 miles from the truck down twistiting paths I ended up bushwhacking straight through to the road and having a nice 2 mile walk back to the truck....

So I'll be off again in the coming weeks to finish the scout and track those game trails to find a new spot to setup...

On the downside I found 2 more branching paths I'll need to GPS.

Gotta love the snow... Shows things u may not have seen otherwise.

Happy scouting y'all.

 

Sounds like a great day. 

 

Did you have to contend with much snow on the ground?

 

How about your GPS, what kind is it?  Do you carry a compass just in case?

 

I've owned a couple handheld GPS units in the past, my first was back in about 1994.  It was an Eagle AccuNav IIRC.  It was huge, maybe 8"x4"x2" or so......battery life for those 6 AA's was horrid.  You had to carry at least two reloads of AA's batteries to make it all day in the bush!

 

My 2nd one was a Garmin 45XL (?) I don't recall how many AA batteries it ran on but it must have been 6 - 8 also but they lasted a week!  The thing was a fraction of the size of the Eagle unit.  I got lucky and sold the Eagle off to a guy in Colden via an ad in the old Swap Sheet!

 

I imagine GPS units have come light years since then!  Back when I messed with them I was hunting out west quite a bit and it was DIY.  These days I'd rather rely on a locals knowledge and packstring.............

 

[zeus1gdsm]

My GPS is my phone! There's an app called back country navigator and it runs on straight GPS.. Has waypoints and route making... Can download topos to the phone and then shut off the WiFi and run on just GPs.. I use this for backpacking in the adks as well... Can get about 3 days out of the phone in this manner... Only using the GPS itself sparing....

*****_ as far as the winter movement is concerned. I was expecting the patterns to be different. How ever what I saw. Matches fairly well with what I saw during gun season considering movement.. The deer moving along the floor between 2 large ridges and moving its length. One end is very swampy as is the other end... The winter scout is more more getting movement pattern data period... As well as mapping the paths and land to allow for more still hunting / finding new spots...

By mapping now and getting some pattern data. Can then spend the summer and fall simply sitting to get new movement data and cross reference that against the winter data.

Only about 5 -6 inches tops.. Just enough to disguise small limbs and uneven terrain.