It was mid October 2022 and I’d just received a phone call from one of the farmers who works our western Kentucky farm. He told me he’d just jumped one of the biggest bucks he’d ever seen on the farm while cutting beans that afternoon, bedded in the standing beans. That was the tip, and it ended up being worth more than all the other intel I’d gathered up to that point in the season.
I killed that buck on the afternoon of October 26, after work, in my work pants and a green hoodie.
When the average whitetail hunter thinks about how to scout for deer the first and last two things that come to mind are post season and preseason, or summer, scouting. I fell into this category for longer than I’d care to admit. It wasn’t until I started gathering and utilizing information gained while the season was already open that my success with mature bucks started to take off.
Successfully finding and scouting the biggest mature bucks on your hunting property can be broken down into three phases. Post season, pre season (summer), and most importantly in season scouting.
What post-season and summer scouting are good for
Before anybody thinks I’m telling you to skip the off season work, both of these have a real place in a successful scouting strategy and I do both every year.
Post-season is when I’m the most intrusive with my scouting. Late January and February the leaves are off and the woods are wide open, so I’ll dive into the bedding areas, walk the trails leading in and out of them, and read the rubs, scrapes, and beds along the way. This time of year I don’t put much thought into bumping deer. They’ve got plenty of time to forge and settle back into their normal patterns before the following season.
Summer scouting is how I take inventory of the bucks on the properties I hunt. Glassing bean fields and running cameras on mineral sites gives you a list of the bucks in the area, and maybe a couple early season hunts before deer shift into their fall ranges. Once that shift happens, I’ll have to relocate certain bucks all over again.
Scouting during these two times of the year can provide you with good intel for the upcoming season. The post season scouting gives you insight into how deer “could” use the area during the season based on the previous years sign. Summer scouting allows you to take inventory of the bucks that “could” be in the area for the bulk of the season and also provide actionable intel for a couple early season hunts.
Where these two types of scouting fall short is they don’t tell you a thing about what the deer are doing at an exact point in the “current” season. Food sources change, bedding areas can change, and a buck’s core area in August can sit half a mile or more from where he spends late October. If your whole plan is built on offseason information, you’re already out of the game.
How to scout for whitetail deer during the season
Odds are you’re already doing a couple of these without calling them scouting. The following are the five things I think about and implement throughout the course of the hunting season.
1. Sign on the walk in and out
Treat every time you hunt whitetail deer as a scouting trip. Meaning keep your eyes peeled on the trip to and from a stand. I’m not saying you should take the scenic route and ruin your access but keep your eyes peeled. Take note of fresh buck sign like tracks, rubs or scrapes that weren’t there last week, deer trails, and food sources that have either dried up or become a hot spot. I like to keep these notes in OnX but you can used whichever hunting or note taking app you prefer. Taking notes like this throughout the season really helps you paint a picture of what the deer are up to on a particular piece of ground.
2. What you see from the stand
This next one should be obvious but hey I’m as guilty as the next guy when it comes to having my nose in my phone while in the tree. Instead of doom scrolling your preferred social media platform really pay attention to what’s going on around you. If you’re hunting a field, where are deer entering and exiting? Are they doing what you expected or something completely different? When hunting the timber, take note on whether the deer are coming from, going to, and the trails they are using. If one deer does something you weren’t expecting that’s one thing. But if all the deer you encounter are doing something different, it’s probably a good time to reevaluate the situation.
3. Cameras that answer a question
Trail cameras, especially cellular trail cameras, have taken the way hunters are able to scout to a whole new level, given you are using them correctly. They help you answer if a particular buck is using an area, the time he’s moving through (daylight or dark), and in some instances, his direction of travel. Where many hunters get in trouble with trail cameras is they get lazy. Don’t base where and when you hunt solely on a picture. Just because you’re not getting pictures of a particular deer doesn’t mean he’s not in the area. Instead of using them to determine where and when to hunt, use them to help answer questions left unanswered during other forms of scouting.
4. Burning a hunt to walk new ground
As hard as it may be for many hunters to hear, sometimes the right move is giving up a hunt to do some recon. This is especially true when hunting unfamiliar turf out of state or even on a new piece close to home. Yes it stings, but think of it this way. You’re trading one hunt for the information that could make or break the next ten sits.
5. What other people tell you
This one killed my 2022 buck. If the property you hunt has any type of agriculture on it odds are the farmers are going to be out there more that you are. Prepping, planting, and harvesting crops while you’re at your day job. Be personable and form a good relationship with them. This goes a long way when it comes to them telling you what they’ve seen and where. It costs nothing but a little conversation and decency.
Where maps and e-scouting actually fit
Search this topic and about half of what you’ll find is somebody explaining how to scout deer with a mapping app. Some of those articles are written by the companies selling the app. Take that for what it’s worth.
I use the mapping app OnX, and the honest truth is I wouldn’t be nearly as efficient when it comes to scouting and hunting without it. Aerial imagery with the topo lines overlayed on apps like OnX, allow you to see terrain features before you ever set foot on it, giving you a significant head start on public land or a new lease. You can see ridges, saddles, benches, creeks, inside corners, as well as where likely bedding and food sources are.
But a map will only get you so far. It shows you the travel corridors deer should use based on terrain, and where the bedding and food likely is. It can’t tell you the white oaks in that draw didn’t produce this year or that the neighbor has cameras and box blinds spread out along one of the property lines that’s affecting deer activity.
Use maps to give you a starting point and to generate questions that need to be answered once you step foot on the property. Circle five spots in the app, then let what you see once you get there help your decide how to proceed. E-scouting narrows the search. It doesn’t finish it.
Scouting in season without blowing out your farm
Now for the honest part, because this is where the pushback comes and the pushback isn’t wrong. Deer are going to notice and adjust to you scouting throughout the season. I won’t pretend otherwise. Human intrusion is the one thing that will put at mature buck on edge and possible cause him to adjust his patterns in my experience. The lesson here is to stay surgical. Scout with intent and get out.
The following are some tips to help keep your intrusion to a minimum when scouting during the season.
Have a question before you go. Walking around to see what you find is how you burn a farm. Walking to a specific oak flat to see if it’s dropping is a fifteen minute trip.
Go in the middle of the day. Deer are bedded, thermals are stable, and you’re not walking through a food source at prime time.
Use rain and wind. A steady rain could help wash away any scent you leave behind while also covering any sound you make.
Stay out of bedding. You can learn almost everything you need from the edges. Scout the bedding areas during the post season.
Scout the way you’d hunt. Use the wind, be as quiet as possible, and overall just practice good woodsmanship. Treat your scouting trip like a hunt and attempt to enter and exit the woods without anything knowing you were there.
Common questions about scouting whitetails
When should you start scouting for deer? For the serious whitetail hunter, scouting is a year round endeavor.
Does scouting during the season spook deer? It can. Research shows deer reduce movement and shift to less-pressured cover after detecting human intrusion, sometimes after a single incursion. The fix is efficiency, not avoidance. Go with a specific question, go midday, use weather to your advantage, and stay out of bedding cover unless you’re moving in to hunt that day.
How often should you check trail cameras in season? Only when you can do it on a trip you were already making, and only when you have a question the camera can answer. Standalone camera runs cost you more than the pictures are worth on most properties.
Is it too late to scout if the season’s already open? No. That’s the point of this whole article. In-season scouting produces the freshest information you’ll get all year, and it’s the reason the same handful of guys keep filling tags.
What’s the most overlooked scouting method? Talking to the people who work the ground. Farmers, neighbors, and equipment operators are in those fields more hours than any of us, and they’ll tell you what they’ve seen if you take the time to ask.
The bottom line
The hunters who kill mature bucks year after year aren’t the ones with the best summer trail camera pictures. They’re the ones still gathering information in November.