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Most everyone hunts around food sources in early season, whether that be around a green field, or an oak flat with acorns. 6 - Look for food sources in BOTH early and late seasons Instead of being disappointed that all you are seeing is doe, realize that you are in an area where the bucks greatest desire in November and December and January is living and therefore where the bucks will be coming. These areas will pay off during the action-packed rut season. When scouting, pay attention to doe bedding areas and look for areas with large doe concentrations. I know that this one is a no-brainer, but I can’t tell you how many folks I know that give lip service to this concept but tend to overlook the importance. 5 - During the pre-rut and rut, find the does A funnel is something that is used similarly by generations of whitetails. The great thing is that these are not features that change from year to year or deer to deer. If you can find a great funnel with deer sign and find the area they cross through, you’ve got a great place to set up your stand. Anything that causes a deer to travel along it until they get through. They can be fences, planted wind breaks or hedges, ditches, or even benches or creeks. Funnels are similar features in that they affect deer travel patterns, but don’t have to be a natural feature. Saddles in the timber, a low spot in a ridge, are perfect places to set up a treestand to find deer as they travel. They travel a lot and look for the easiest way to get from point A to point B. Deer, unlike toddlers and mountain goats, almost always choose the path of least resistance. With the proliferation of large tracts of timber in the South, an important thing to focus on while hunting the timber are saddles and funnels.
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The edges of clear cuts and old logging areas can be bonanzas as well and are often a great place to find travel corridors. Often where a pine forest meets hardwoods is a great transition area to find deer. A great one is where one type of timber meets another. But there are other kinds of transition areas to hone in on. In the South it’s a bit overlooked because there is a ton of big timber and less green fields than in the Midwest. 3 - Hunt transitional areasĪgain, this is another oft repeated piece of advice wherever you hunt whitetails, but I believe in the South it’s an often-overlooked feature to focus on and can pay off big if you focus on it. It’s easy to open your OnX app and see terrain and features, but if you don’t know how a whitetail uses those features, you are at a disadvantage. Knowing how a deer thinks, where they want to be depending on the time of day or year, what routes they are likely to take in different circumstances, or even which water source in your area they prefer can make all the difference. With all the technological advances and gadgets we have now as hunters, which I love by the way, many of us have moved away from the Woodsmanship knowledge that our forebearers used to survive. Woodsmanship is a vital component of any consistently successful hunter’s makeup, and it’s in short supply anymore. Yes, this is a cliché saying, but it’s not one you will want to dismiss out of hand. Utilize both e-scouting and boots on the ground scouting to gain this knowledge. Knowing the herds where you hunt better than other hunters is critical. As the fall season progresses and hunting pressure increases, deer change their patterns. Knowing your quarry intimately is crucial. At the same time, in many areas over the past few years, hunting pressure has risen. Depending on the area of the South you hunt, deer herd sizes or available land to hunt have been shrinking. This one seems obvious, but it deserves to be said.