Andre's In Season Scouting Tactics

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jlh42581
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Re: Andre's In Season Scouting Tactics

Unread postby jlh42581 » Thu Jan 26, 2012 4:45 am

GRFox wrote:We have no fields to shine in any of my spots. No crop fields to look for tracks, and not a lot of land to work with. My key this year I think is going to be to find as much buck bedding as possible and bounce around and hunt them when the conditions are right. I wanted to scout more in season this year, but It is just too hard not to hunt! :D



Head to an area you think they travel with a shovel and a rake. Dig up an 8ftx8ft square a couple inches deep then rake it over smooth. Track tracker lol


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Re: Andre's In Season Scouting Tactics

Unread postby dan » Thu Jan 26, 2012 5:28 am

Dan, maybe you can shed some light on how exactly Andre goes about doing this.

Andrae uses a lot of trail cameras... He didn't back in his Wisconsin days though... He also glasses a lot ( probably more than he hunts ) and sits a lot of observation stands.. Andrae is also very aggressive. I have seen him scout new pieces and he will go in right during season and go right into the bedding areas and kick the bucks up and see where they head and where they go, and came from. He will walk an entire area in a day then go hunt somewhere else for a week or two and come back and hunt the bedding areas. If he jumps a buck he wants, he might set up immeadiatly...
Andraes scouting is different than most of ours because he has different goals than most of us... Finding sign of a mature buck does him no good because most mature bucks are not big enough to meet his goals so he don't waste his time with them... He specifically scouts and hunts in spots where he knows a world class buck is living.
We are talking about a guy who passes on booners cause there is a bigger booner around, or because he can't get it on film.
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Re: Andre's In Season Scouting Tactics

Unread postby MOBIGBUCKS » Thu Jan 26, 2012 5:42 am

dan wrote:
Dan, maybe you can shed some light on how exactly Andre goes about doing this.

Andrae uses a lot of trail cameras... He didn't back in his Wisconsin days though... He also glasses a lot ( probably more than he hunts ) and sits a lot of observation stands.. Andrae is also very aggressive. I have seen him scout new pieces and he will go in right during season and go right into the bedding areas and kick the bucks up and see where they head and where they go, and came from. He will walk an entire area in a day then go hunt somewhere else for a week or two and come back and hunt the bedding areas. If he jumps a buck he wants, he might set up immeadiatly...
Andraes scouting is different than most of ours because he has different goals than most of us... Finding sign of a mature buck does him no good because most mature bucks are not big enough to meet his goals so he don't waste his time with them... He specifically scouts and hunts in spots where he knows a world class buck is living.
We are talking about a guy who passes on booners cause there is a bigger booner around, or because he can't get it on film.


Wow! :) That is definately an insight in how he does things.
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Re: Andre's In Season Scouting Tactics

Unread postby MOBIGBUCKS » Thu Jan 26, 2012 5:45 am

Dan, how do you do it in comparison to Andre? Your not using a lot of trailcameras are you?
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Re: Andre's In Season Scouting Tactics

Unread postby addisonlee » Thu Jan 26, 2012 8:12 am

dan wrote:
Dan, maybe you can shed some light on how exactly Andre goes about doing this.

Andrae uses a lot of trail cameras... He didn't back in his Wisconsin days though... He also glasses a lot ( probably more than he hunts ) and sits a lot of observation stands.. Andrae is also very aggressive. I have seen him scout new pieces and he will go in right during season and go right into the bedding areas and kick the bucks up and see where they head and where they go, and came from. He will walk an entire area in a day then go hunt somewhere else for a week or two and come back and hunt the bedding areas. If he jumps a buck he wants, he might set up immeadiatly...
Andraes scouting is different than most of ours because he has different goals than most of us... Finding sign of a mature buck does him no good because most mature bucks are not big enough to meet his goals so he don't waste his time with them... He specifically scouts and hunts in spots where he knows a world class buck is living.
We are talking about a guy who passes on booners cause there is a bigger booner around, or because he can't get it on film.



Interesting perspective. Thanks for sharing Dan.
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Re: Andre's In Season Scouting Tactics

Unread postby dan » Thu Jan 26, 2012 9:22 am

MOBIGBUCKS wrote:Dan, how do you do it in comparison to Andre? Your not using a lot of trailcameras are you?

I do the majority of my scouting post season... I find the majority of the buck bedding areas, and try to figure out the best ambush spots for each bed in spring/winter...
Come season, the majority of my scouting is to determine if a decent buck is in an area... High rubs, big tracks, rumors, shining etc... Then I hunt the beds previously scouted starting with the most likely and working may way down the list.
If I never scouted a property before, I sometimes scout with topo's and aerials, or on foot and find what looks most likely to be a good bedding area and get as close as possible and set up...
Often, in some areas I don't even pre-scout, or look for sign. I just trust my spring scouting and move in and hunt the staging from the beds and see what happens... If the bed looked real good in spring, a lot of the time there will be something bedding there when I randomly pick that spot...
I am not as much of a fan of Andraes in season aggressive bedroom assaults as he is.. But, it does work.
I do find, that the more I scout, the more successful my hunts are.
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Re: Andre's In Season Scouting Tactics

Unread postby BigHunt » Thu Jan 26, 2012 11:20 am

dan wrote:
MOBIGBUCKS wrote:Dan, how do you do it in comparison to Andre? Your not using a lot of trailcameras are you?

I do the majority of my scouting post season... I find the majority of the buck bedding areas, and try to figure out the best ambush spots for each bed in spring/winter...
Come season, the majority of my scouting is to determine if a decent buck is in an area... High rubs, big tracks, rumors, shining etc... Then I hunt the beds previously scouted starting with the most likely and working may way down the list.
If I never scouted a property before, I sometimes scout with topo's and aerials, or on foot and find what looks most likely to be a good bedding area and get as close as possible and set up...
Often, in some areas I don't even pre-scout, or look for sign. I just trust my spring scouting and move in and hunt the staging from the beds and see what happens... If the bed looked real good in spring, a lot of the time there will be something bedding there when I randomly pick that spot...
I am not as much of a fan of Andraes in season aggressive bedroom assaults as he is.. But, it does work.
I do find, that the more I scout, the more successful my hunts are.


GREAT post dan :clap:
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Re: Andre's In Season Scouting Tactics

Unread postby Hunter74 » Thu Jan 26, 2012 1:44 pm

So Dan when you do scout a piece of land in season on foot to look for sign do you walk a lot of the property with little worry of educating the deer or making them harder to kill as long as you stay a safe distance away from the bedding?

What would you consider a safe distance from the bedding in most cases?

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Re: Andre's In Season Scouting Tactics

Unread postby dan » Thu Jan 26, 2012 11:58 pm

Hunter74 wrote:So Dan when you do scout a piece of land in season on foot to look for sign do you walk a lot of the property with little worry of educating the deer or making them harder to kill as long as you stay a safe distance away from the bedding?

What would you consider a safe distance from the bedding in most cases?

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I generally go straight to suspected bedding with a stand on my back and scout and hunt the same day so when the buck smells I have been there its to late.
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Re: Andre's In Season Scouting Tactics

Unread postby gjs4 » Fri Jan 27, 2012 1:59 pm

I attempt to keep my position cloaked but have openings on many of my stands to which i can glass adjacent stand areas and corridors.....scent free and high value.
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Re: Andre's In Season Scouting Tactics

Unread postby virginiashadow » Sat Jan 28, 2012 1:40 am

Informative post. My in-season scouting stinks due to lack of time/effort.
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Re: Andre's In Season Scouting Tactics

Unread postby dan » Sat Jan 28, 2012 4:54 am

dan wrote:
Hunter74 wrote:So Dan when you do scout a piece of land in season on foot to look for sign do you walk a lot of the property with little worry of educating the deer or making them harder to kill as long as you stay a safe distance away from the bedding?

What would you consider a safe distance from the bedding in most cases?


Any time you walk a property off of the beaten path your doing "some" damage... I think once you get within a certain distance to bedding, you do a lot more damage... How close? Well, that would be dependant on many factors.
Pressure
Buck personality
openness of the terrain
etc...
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Re: Andre's In Season Scouting Tactics

Unread postby MOBIGBUCKS » Tue Aug 28, 2012 8:59 am

I wanted to revive this thread since season is quickly approaching. I meant to ask Dan if he would have Andrae go into specific detail about what he does on this subject. We got an insight from Dan's earlier post, but I would like to see Andrae write extensively on this subject someday; I really think this is where he separates himself from most other hunters.

I'm definately gonna try and scout more and spend more time glassing this season. If it would ever rain more than a 1/4 of an inch around here, I could go find some fresh tracks as well. Anyone else have anything new they are gonna try this year?
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Re: Andre's In Season Scouting Tactics

Unread postby Sweet Shot 7 » Tue Aug 28, 2012 9:14 am

MOBIGBUCKS wrote:I wanted to revive this thread since season is quickly approaching. I meant to ask Dan if he would have Andrae go into specific detail about what he does on this subject. We got an insight from Dan's earlier post, but I would like to see Andrae write extensively on this subject someday; I really think this is where he separates himself from most other hunters.

I'm definately gonna try and scout more and spend more time glassing this season. If it would ever rain more than a 1/4 of an inch around here, I could go find some fresh tracks as well. Anyone else have anything new they are gonna try this year?


Hunting more fence lines for observation stands. Not dive in until everything is right!
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Re: Andre's In Season Scouting Tactics

Unread postby dan » Tue Aug 28, 2012 9:47 am

There are a lot of things that are similar about me and Andrae, and a lot of things that are different... Years ago, I can remember hunting the same vast areas and going in from a different direction and even though it was 1000's of acres, ending up at the same tree...
So, we go about our scouting different, but we seem to come to the same conclusions...
I think the biggest difference in me and him is that he has gone the rought of going after world class bucks by buying, leasing, or getting permission to hunt premium ground, where I have really stuck to the public ground and small over hunted farms... Sure, I have hunted some cushy managed land, and he has hunted some public.
Andrae would probably disagree with me on this, but I think the public land bucks need a little more respect in regards to there bedding... I do agree, that mature bucks can stick tight to a certain bedding area, but I think walking those bedding areas the day before I hunt them would hurt me more than learning them in winter and spring... Being that he is not just after a big buck, but after a certain buck, he feels he needs to lay eyes on it in order to kill it... He has done real well jumping bucks out of there bed and then hunting them there... I have done better finding the beds in spring and then figuring out where the buck is hanging and moving in for the kill. I do think it might be beneficial for me to try some of Andraes tactics on ground I don't know well... I did some of his tactics with good success in the past. I just do "most" of my premium scouting in winter/spring and he does "most" of his during hunting season.
I guess if there is a lesson here, its probably that sometimes you can get away with pushing the envelope.


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