A common mistake of the rookie Beast

[Twenty Up]

Great thread

I'd consider myself a rookie beast and have been making mistakes since day #1, but to me it's only a mistake if you do not learn from it & continue to do so.

That being said I've devised a strategy that seems to help

#1. Online scouting areas
I find that if I scout an area with caltopo, choose a couple ridges that "look good" and go in to check them out I find buck beds. I'm at 100% so far this season finding either a seasonal or main bed. However on the flip side if I decide to skip the caltopo/online scouting and just walk a new area and pick & choose ridges from my GPS my success goes wayyyy down. I'll find a doe bed or an immature buck bed and that's it. Preparation before you even get in the truck can make or break your scouting trip.

#2. Have a Plan & Stick With it
Generally speaking this coincides with #1 in that I'll choose ridges and work methodically from N to S, E to W or however the terrain lays. This helps me locate sign a lot faster and use my limited time more efficiently with locating spots worthy of hunting. Without having a plan my confidence goes down and I'll look at my GPS thinking "this looks good, but so does this..."

#3. Look
Sounds stupid but I get caught up with power scouting and have literally walked into buck beds without realizing it. Slowly scan the area, follow the sign and pay attention to what elevation or foliage the beds are at. Once you find a bed, stay with that elevation and keep looking for more.

#4. Knowing What's Worthy
I struggle with this the most, by far. Being new to beast scouting sometimes I'll plan a hunt around a younger buck or I'll pass up a good spot and not realize it till much later. Then you have to decide if it's worth going back second time to figure it all out & find a good tree. This also goes with scouting too fast, think about it and follow your gut. I feel this is something that comes with experience but it helps if you are taking your time.

#5
Most importantly have fun, it's not always about finding the biggest bucks or sheds. Take the dog or your family out to enjoy the outdoors and His creations.

[swampyak]

I'm definitely guilty of not totally preparing a site and having plans to come back and finish it but then life gets in the way. Next thing you know it's season. I've been trying to do better at finishing sites

[Greg4579]

New Beast here (joined last December) who is totally guilty here. My plan all along has been to find and scout every piece of woods I can legally get into within a 20 minute radius of my work and office. All of this is new land to me and I find I am way more caught up in cyber scouting and checking these properties out than I am for prepping. I have been reasonably successful finding beds, but I have no clue what tree I would hunt out of or how I would best access. Looks like I need to stop looking at new properties and just pick a handful and concentrate on them. I am already nervous that I am running out of time for winter scouting as things started to green up in February here and I feel like I am losing a month!

Thanks for the reminder and sage advice here.

[matt1336]

New Beast here (joined last December) who is totally guilty here. My plan all along has been to find and scout every piece of woods I can legally get into within a 20 minute radius of my work and office. All of this is new land to me and I find I am way more caught up in cyber scouting and checking these properties out than I am for prepping. I have been reasonably successful finding beds, but I have no clue what tree I would hunt out of or how I would best access. Looks like I need to stop looking at new properties and just pick a handful and concentrate on them. I am already nervous that I am running out of time for winter scouting as things started to green up in February here and I feel like I am losing a month!

Thanks for the reminder and sage advice here.

I'm guilty of this too Greg. It's definitely possibly to bite off more than you and your schedule can chew. The speed scouting has put me in bad situations in the past. It best for me to slow down and only get a couple new properties to scout a year and refine the properties that i had hunted in the past.
For me it takes several years to get a property dialed in....at least that's my perception. Sometimes I land on great sign during my first scout/hunt and my initial assumptions about how the deer use that property are correct. Most of the time the deer teach me through my observations of them how I need to hunt- this is typically a never ending process in most places I hunt. The only exception would be very obvious and unavoidable terrain features like funnels. Even then I'm learning things. What time of year (down to the exact day and time) are best to hunt these funnels, what weather conditions make these spots slam dunk stands. We can never stop scouting and learning. Most of us are always doing it.....observing fields throughout the year, cyber scouting, talking with neighbors, you name it. Never be satisfied I've found that even the old family farm and the deer that live there can hold some surprises for the people that have hunted for years.

[Bonehead]

One of the best threads I’ve read. Lots of great insight.

[Lockdown]

Even after keeping all of this in mind last year during spring scouting, I still had a morning hunt where I couldn’t get to my stand Turns out the cattails I had to access through were a floating bog. Nightmare. Found access later but that hunt was ruined. Access on the island was planned out, but I never reached it! I wonder if that big 10 came back to bed that day...

Had another hunt where the cattails were so thick I almost didn’t make it. Stand, sticks, and bow were catching cattails like a mother. Didn’t get set up until sunrise as it took an extra 45 minutes. Not impossible that cost me a deer...

Now I know I need to make those trails a month before season without my gear. Once I have the trail I’m good to go. I’ll just stop a hair shy of dry land so they can’t smell my trail.

Another hunt that almost didn’t happen was due to crazy amounts of rain. Checked the river crossing mid summer and it was hip deep. Day of the hunt I made it in without going over my waders, but got a tad wet on the way out.

You really have to think about everything. Best part about the floating bog access was once I did reach the island a new blowdown blocked my access trail so it still ended up not working as planned anyway.

[tgreeno]

Cattails are no joke. During scouting in Feb/March they seem easy to traverse. Then when you get in there during the season they are twice as high, plus you're sinking in every step. I took a couple swims in muck in Sept.

Plan for the worse from the start. Cell phones in a plastic bag in your chest pocket.

[Boogieman1]

I think a big mistake that isn’t just a rookie thing is finding sign post season but hunting it at the wrong time frame. I don’t get snow to scout on so weeding through tracks, beds, rubs, turds etc... is sometimes easily misinterpreted. Ain’t gonna lie it sometimes takes me a couple years of trial and error b4 I get it down to the right time and perfect tree to give me a shot. But in my opinion once u get it down it never changes. The spot might not hold a mature buck every year but when it does it follows the same instinctual behavior as the one b4 him

[Tater]

Great thread. I am a rookie beast and this thread will hopefully save me some headaches come next fall.

[ghoasthunter]

what I did this year is scout during season to get a head start. I would hunt food to bed or scrapes in morning pull out around 10 and drive to another block still hut slash bed hunt with my tree saddle and sticks if I found a bed I would prep it for future months then pull out and hunt over a bed for evening. I would scout the wind ward sides for beds to try and keep it at minimum intrusion. then November 14 I shoot a good buck scent checking his scrape returning to his bed. was pretty cool the rut was winding down and the buck was bedding on a point overlooking that big scrape. I kill him mid j hook from scrape to his bed. after that I was scouting beds till January 1 now winter bow is open and I'm back on the bed hunting.

[northeast beast]

what I did this year is scout during season to get a head start. I would hunt food to bed or scrapes in morning pull out around 10 and drive to another block still hut slash bed hunt with my tree saddle and sticks if I found a bed I would prep it for future months then pull out and hunt over a bed for evening. I would scout the wind ward sides for beds to try and keep it at minimum intrusion. then November 14 I shoot a good buck scent checking his scrape returning to his bed. was pretty cool the rut was winding down and the buck was bedding on a point overlooking that big scrape. I kill him mid j hook from scrape to his bed. after that I was scouting beds till January 1 now winter bow is open and I'm back on the bed hunting.

Great advise...so putting it all together....you knew where the bed was...did you know the scrape was there? Did you know you were in the J-hook? Was it a morning hunt if he was headed back to bed I would assume so...I've been investigating that j hook a bit and thinking about setting up like you did....any other advise when setting up on the hook?

[ghoasthunter]

ok hear was the layout I was up on a mountain that runs north too south. chest nut oaks were the only oaks that droped that year and only in the high elevation. the high point where the does were bedding and feeding was the same area but it was lacking cover for good buck bedding. off the west side the ridge dropped into a long narrow bulrush swamp that went even with the whole high ridge for about half a mile. west of the swamp was a hiking trail that also ran with the swamp. on the south end of swamp was a spring brook that fed it. the spring brook was traveling south up into a large saddle. think of a big horseshoe that cupped the end of swamp creating a point on west side. that point overlooked the south end of swamp and the hiking trail held the buck bed. and the only access into that spot was below that point. the bucks travel off top of oak ridge drop down too the swamp run the rocks on the edge south bound and make a giant scape along the end of swamp every year. I found the bed last year. fifty yards south of that was a hooking rub line leading to point. from the bucks bed he could see his scrape and watch it all day. I waited for a north east wind for this bed and could only approach it in mornings. I got in 2 hours before sunrise walked the west side of the swamp cut into the bull rushes fifty yards before the swamp end and (walked in the brook) all the way past the scrape and rubs along the brook. cut off brook and did my own j hook behind the bucks rub line and setup a 100 yards behind his bed strait down wind. I shot the buck at 8 in morning on his rub line headed to bed at 10 yards.

[ghoasthunter]

j hooking works its all about timing be it during rut moon or weather fronts. I killed 8 bucks last 8 years 4 of them were with j hooks threw out different times of season.

[DaveT1963]

Lockdown - great post. I agree 100%, if you don't prep a stand site down here, with out long growing season, don't be surprised if you don't get a shot. I did zero prep this year (I hunted 95% from a new tree each time I hunted - even for predawn morning set -ups) and it cost me a couple times and I had to do the treble hook, pull and saw too many times from my stand. I am going back to prepped trees this year. I also prep access routes.... not to wear they are noticeable, but to clear thorns and other things that make quiet entry impossible.

[<DK>]

Or you spend the off season clearing kill trees, clearing paths, planning your entrance...and never hunt the area. I have done plenty of that.

That is the truth!