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ARTICLES
The Four Cornerstones Of
Scouting
(Originally
published in HuntOnly.com)
©
By Othmar Vohringer
I
still remember the first day I went scouting in
anticipation of my very first bowhunting adventure. That was 17 years
ago. To
say I soon became frustrated would be an understatement. The only thing
I knew
for sure was that I had to scout much differently from the way I would
when
rifle hunting. As bowhunters, we have to be close to our quarry, in my
case
that would be about 25 to 30 yards away.
My question was “Where do I get started?” How can I
reduce this huge vista
before me to a small 25-yard circle where I could successfully ambush
deer? The
answer came to me when I remembered what I learned from my animal
behaviour
studies, that all deer movement is based on what I call “the
four factors”.
The four factors are FOOD, COVER, TERRAIN and STRUCTURE. (To a lesser
degree,
water is a fifth factor in arid areas or during particularly hot
years.) These
four factors are the corner stones of scouting for bowhunting success.
All deer
movement is somehow related to one or more of the four factors.
The beauty of the four factors is that once a hunter fully understands
how
these factors relate to each other, they can be applied to any area and
during
any time of the hunting season. Lets look at these factors in detail
and see
how we can combine them to find stand locations that will get us
consistently
within bow range of deer.
Food:
Food is the catalyst of all deer movement. Food sources change almost
constantly and deer match their movement patterns accordingly. A smart
hunter
therefore closely monitors the changing food sources, and also knows
what the
preferred agricultural and woodland food sources are in his hunting
area
throughout the hunting season. Because food spurs much of the daily
deer
travel, all scouting should start by finding the preferred food
sources. The
preferred food sources are always high on nutrition and often change
from area
to area. While a deer in one area might prefer white or red acorns, in
another
area it might be something different, such as honey suckle, wild clover
and
berries. Observing deer, talking to local hunters and following deer
trails
will reveal what deer in your area like to eat. Making careful notes of
all the
preferred foods and at what time during the hunting season they are
available
to the deer will give you a starting point to find the other factors,
cover,
terrain and structure. These three factors determine how deer travel to
and
from the food sources.
Cover:
Of the three remaining factors, cover is perhaps the most important to
deer
movement. Deer use cover in one of two ways, either as resting places
(bedding
areas) or as travel corridors. Traveling in cover gives deer a great
measure of
security and they will make detours of considerable distances to take
advantage
of the available cover. Cover comes in many forms. It can be a thicket,
an
irrigation ditch, an overgrown fence line, a hedgerow, a gully, ravine
or it
can be as little as a small depression in the landscape. Less obvious
features,
such as a standing row of corn, a stretch of tall grass, a wooded or
brushy
finger leading into a field, are also cover to a deer. Anything that
lets deer
travel without exposing themselves fully to the open yet still enables
them to
see into the open areas constitutes cover. Deer do not require much
cover to
completely vanish from a hunter’s or predator’s
sight. They are masters at
blending into the surrounding landscape. A few years ago I observed a
small
buck evading hunters by taking advantage of a fencerow and a strip of
knee-high
grass. He sneaked along, almost crawling on his belly, ever so often
stopping
to watch the hunters walk by him at less than 50 yards. They never knew
the
buck was watching them. So
look for
anything that could provide a deer with some measure of cover to
travel. It
will be on the edges of cover where you will find the main trails,
rubs,
scrapes and other deer sign.
Terrain:
As you look at a topographical map you will notice that the terrain
(topography) consists of undulations made up of hills, flatlands,
mountains and
so on. When deer travel they are like you and me in that they prefer
the
easiest route from point A to point B. Deer often will travel some
distance to
walk in comfort around a steep hill rather than exert valuable energy
to hike
over the hill. Think what would be the easiest route for you to get
from one
point to another and that likely is the same route deer choose provided
it
gives them sufficient cover as described above.
Structure:
Within the terrain are things that I call structure. Structure comes in
two
forms natural or manmade features that influence deer movement. A smart
bowhunter learns to find structures that will
“funnel” deer past his stand
location. Structures can be anything from a blown down tree, a cattle
fence,
and a shallow creek crossing to a narrow saddle over a steep hill or a
bench on
a hillside. Manmade structures of course can be altered in such a way
that it
forces deer to travel where it is to the advantage of the hunter. My
favourite
structures to hunt are cattle fences near a break in the fence. As
well,
hedgerows leading from a woodlot into a field, shallow creek crossings,
saddles
and other crossing points are deer travel magnets.
Other, often overlooked, forms of structure are made up of edges. Edges
exist
anywhere two types of structures meet, like a cornfield bordering onto
a
woodlot. Where stands of hardwood and softwood trees meet is also an
edge and
so is the border of a thicket inside a woodlot. Deer prefer to travel
along such
edges because it provides them a travel route with cover. Wherever two
or more
edges meet could be a hotspot for deer travel.
Conclusion:
Here
is an example of how I used these four factors to
scout the location of one of my favourite stands that consistently
produced
deer. The
treestand was located on a
narrow bench leading up a steep hill and onto a ridge top. At the ridge
top
several white oak tress produced a large annual mast crop (preferred
woodland
food source in that area). On that same ridge top, but further back
from the
oaks was a small thicket made up of a patch of young pine growth that
the deer
used as a bedding area. At the bottom of the hill was a large cornfield
(preferred agricultural food source) that bordered onto the woodland
and a
swampy overgrown area on the other side.
Between the cornfield and the
woodland, a small shallow creek flowed out of the wetland. Deer crossed
the
creek where the two structures provided an edge. From there the trails
merged
into a larger trail that led up a shallow depression (cover and easy
travel)
along the steep hillside and then onto the bench. This is where my
stand was
placed, before the trail proceeded to the top of the ridge. The mistake
some
hunters would have made in that scenario is to place the stand close to
the
agricultural or woodland food source. It’s a mistake because
at the food source
deer can enter form different trails. Whereas at the bench in the
hillside the
deer coming from different trails were funnelled through one narrow
lane that
got them within easy bow range of my stand.
The
reason I use this particular stand location as an
example here and during my seminars is because it illustrates perfectly
how all
four factors came together and allowed me to pick the perfect stand
location.
If you paid attention to the above paragraph you realized that this was
an
early season, morning stand. Once the acorns where gone and the
cornfield
harvested, the deer abandoned that travel route because the food
factor, the
catalyst and most important factor of deer movement, was no longer
available.
Why was it a morning stand?
The deer were feeding all night in the corn
and in
the morning, right at daybreak, they left the field to head to the
bedding area
in a young pine growth thicket at the tip of the ridge. Before they
went to
“bed” they had a snack on the white acorns. The
only way I could access that
stand was by coming from the ridge top as I did not have permission to
cross
the farmland. With that my only option to enter the stand without
alerting deer
to my presence was in the morning when all the deer still were in the
cornfield. Next
time you head out to
scout the perfect bow hunting stand location, remember the four factors
of deer
movement, how they relate to each other, and place your stand
accordingly. Your
success rate will improve.
----------------------------------
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