Buck bedding areas on public land...

[GRUD]

I killed a good public land buck two years ago and he was bedded about 80 yards from a parking area.

Both of my biggest bucks I have killed on the ground. It's challenging but do able in those areas that don't have trees big enough to hunt out of.

[ozzz]

I killed a good public land buck two years ago and he was bedded about 80 yards from a parking area.

Both of my biggest bucks I have killed on the ground. It's challenging but do able in those areas that don't have trees big enough to hunt out of.

Can you go into more detail about both your biggest buck and how you go about hunting them from the ground?

[dan]

bump

[fishlips]

I was out about a month ago scouting a spot that I thought I might find some sign. It was close to the road between a couple of parking areas. Walked through the small patch of woods that is surrounded by lowland swampy stuff and didn't cut a track. Are some of these spots seasonal?

It seems perfect. There are crop fields across the road and it just has the feel of a place that people would overlook. There was a small sliver of woods to the south that I did not have a chance to look at, but maybe that is the spot that I needed to look at.

[JoeRE]

This spring I scouted a bigger chunk of public land I started hunting a little bit last fall. Most of the public land is a big square chunk of timber, but on an aerial I noticed two small brushy draws that stuck out into a field at right angles to where the parking lot connected to the main timber - right at the edge of the public. These draws were 300-400 yards from the parking lot but I thought no one would probably ever go up into them because of their location. I walked up the first one and WHam, there were Ox Buck's tracks everywhere and several worn beds at the top of each draw. Ox Buck is a deer I found on camera last fall and is a massive bodied buck, a big mainframe 9 point with forked G2s. He bedded with the prevailing winds blowing down from the field over his back while watching down the draw. He had clodhopper feet to boot and that's why I called him Ox - I saw his tracks before I got pics of him. If I get him this fall people can see the pics I know where he beds and I know where he goes to find does now...



The track may not look huge compared to my hand but its big - Ive got big hands.

[Jackson Marsh]

Awesome Joe! You can show me......I won't tell

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[365buckin]

Good advice. It's amazing what you will find when you avoid walking the path of least resentence and walk or ever crawl through the thick stuff.
Short story: I hunted this one saddle off and on for years, I had confidence in the spot and seen a lot of deer but never the big guy. I left my stand one day and thought I would walk up the ridge and circle back to the car. I walked 150 yards up almost to the top then the ridge got narrow. I found several trees blown over. I thought about turning around and going back but I decided to crawl through and over the downed trees. I threw my leg over one tree and stepped right into a buck bed. I stood there and looked down the ridge right at the tree I was setup in. I felt pretty stupid. How many times had that buck laid there and watched me come in and out of my stand. He was watching me and watching all the deer I was letting pass. Smart old deer. I learned a lot that day!

You gotta love those ahh haa moments!!!! I feel so much smarter after I make those discoveries!

[BassBoysLLP]

ttt

[Peter]

Great thread. The info here is making me rethink some spots I walked on public land last year. One area that had tons of young poplars that made it really tough to get through, but it was right between a two lane highway and a dirt access road that tons of hunters were using. Maps showed me there was a pond right in the middle. I didn't make the effort to get through it, but should have! It's now back on my radar for this year.

[dan]

BUMP

[BowHusker]

Wow these are great threads! I have a disadvantage with being able to get to where other's aren't willing to go on the public land I hunt. The area is a man made reservoir in hill/farm country so during gun season (which just ended) all the hunter's just get in boats and the area gets flooded with orange with little effort required on their part. The terrain is pretty difficult to hunt though and there is consistently 130-180 inch deer taken here year in and out so obviously many survive. I mainly just bow or blackpowder hunt so I don't see alot of hunters. Hopefully despite the gun hunters touching pretty much all areas I'll still be able to find some well used beds.

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[Ryan]

Its not easy Jake... Especially at 1st. In some terrains you can look right at a buck bed and not know if it is or not... It takes time to build up those areas and likely you won't put a whole lot of new spots on each year. Just keep looking and it will get easier and easier... For me, a lot of the beds are hard to see, but from a distance I can pick out the ingrediance that makes a buck bed, so just a close up look at the area and I go straight to the beds, thats why I am good at finding them. To get to that point, there is only one way to get good, you have to keep doing it till you get to the point where you look at the terrain and can see where the beds should be.

Dan, on the public ive been scouting I've defiantly got into better buck sign by using aerial photos, when I get there though I've had a hard time piecing the sign together to find his bed, do you follow rub lines right into bedding areas or what to rubs tell you when there kind of sporadic all over the place?

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[Ryan]

Its not easy Jake... Especially at 1st. In some terrains you can look right at a buck bed and not know if it is or not... It takes time to build up those areas and likely you won't put a whole lot of new spots on each year. Just keep looking and it will get easier and easier... For me, a lot of the beds are hard to see, but from a distance I can pick out the ingrediance that makes a buck bed, so just a close up look at the area and I go straight to the beds, thats why I am good at finding them. To get to that point, there is only one way to get good, you have to keep doing it till you get to the point where you look at the terrain and can see where the beds should be.

Dan, on the public ive been scouting I've defiantly got into better buck sign by using aerial photos, when I get there though I've had a hard time piecing the sign together to find his bed, do you follow rub lines right into bedding areas or what to rubs tell you when there kind of sporadic all over the place?

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[dan]

Dan, on the public ive been scouting I've defiantly got into better buck sign by using aerial photos, when I get there though I've had a hard time piecing the sign together to find his bed, do you follow rub lines right into bedding areas or what to rubs tell you when there kind of sporadic all over the place?

Rubs are not a good indicator... Some of my best bedding areas have no rubs at all, some have one or two scattered like every other piece of terrain around. Yet, occasionally a super aggressive buck will lay down a lot of rubs in and around his bed... Often there is a rub right in the bed, marking to others that its "his"... I think population density and competition for premium beds is what causes rubbing near beds... On most of the area I hunt rub clusters in the bed room kill bucks pretty quickly and its not seen often with mature bucks, although I often have people say they found a rub cluster and ask if its a bedding area... That kind of baffles me. I don't know where people get that, but rub clusters can be for a lot of reasons. It could be a doe(s) crossing over the bucks trail, it could be staging before food, or before an opening, it could be a cluster of a certain tree the buck likes to rub... Without knowing bedding, a rub don't tell me much other than a deer of a certain size was here... Most rublines that end at beds don't end right at the bed. Some do, but most don't. And again, there are rublines all over the woods that have nothing to do with bedding...

There are two basic ways to find buck bedding... Search every inch of ground in the off season looking for the actual bed, and the other is learn to read the terrain. A combination of the two is probably best..

The 1st thing I do is look for over looked spots on a property that have the right cover and terrain to support bedding. I skip over all the easy access spots where everyone goes... If people can and do hunt every inch of the terrain, move on, you won't consistently kill mature bucks there. However, even in heavy pressure there is usually a lot of little over looked spots. If there wasn't, there would be no deer surviving a gun season to live to be a big buck.

Another thing I like to do is when I see a big buck from a tree or out glassing, or if I shoot one... After season is over I back track the buck and find where he was bedded and have better intel on how to set up next time... You wouldn't believe how many people think they don't need to know where bucks bed because they hunt private with lots of deer and get lots of action, never get the biggest oldest bucks cause they are bedded in a position watching or smelling the hunter access.

For example in farm country big bucks often bed the down wind edge of a woodlot watching an open field while smelling the woods behind... If you always enter from a certain way to hunt a certain stand, on a certain wind, he will "always" know when your there.

[BowHusker]

Dan, on the public ive been scouting I've defiantly got into better buck sign by using aerial photos, when I get there though I've had a hard time piecing the sign together to find his bed, do you follow rub lines right into bedding areas or what to rubs tell you when there kind of sporadic all over the place?

The 1st thing I do is look for over looked spots on a property that have the right cover and terrain to support bedding. I skip over all the easy access spots where everyone goes... If people can and do hunt every inch of the terrain, move on, you won't consistently kill mature bucks there. However, even in heavy pressure there is usually a lot of little over looked spots. If there wasn't, there would be no deer surviving a gun season to live to be a big buck.

This is exactly what I was thinking about last night and it def gave me some future areas to investigate due to the fact it's far from the lake access Hunters use with their boats, it literally butts right up to a major highway, it sits very near crop fields, it's situated perfectly for the prevailing winds while being able to watch below and I myself have walked by it many times. Add in the fact I almost hit a slob there a couple weeks ago with my work truck. I can't believe I've never connected these dots and investigated this area!

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