Use your summer deer scouting skills now to improve your deer hunting luck this fall.
Scouting for whitetails year-round is the surest way to learn their habits, and once you master those you’re that much closer to putting hair in the crosshairs come fall. Mastering late spring and summer scouting is just one more element in your hunting arsenal.
Look now for evidence that a buck has survived the past hunting season to make him a candidate for next fall’s tag. Finding sheds after spring green-up is a little harder, but it can still be accomplished.
Think back on what bucks were doing when they lost their antlers in January. They were primarily focused on finding calories to replenish their rut-depleted bodies. A case in point is the last set of sheds I found a year ago.
The buck dropped one antler in what had been a green food plot of field rye that I found when I began my day of post-season scouting. About four hours later I found the matching antler of the 4-year-old buck on the edge of a blackberry briar and honeysuckle patch that was bordered by a fence 150 yards away. Not only did the thicket provide a green cool-season food source, it also provided the buck’s security cover and bedding area. By walking the trails between where the two sheds were found it gave me plenty of options for hanging a stand.
Summer Food
One of my favorite summer activities is to grab a quality optic and cruise soybean fields in the evenings. Wherever these agriculture crops grow and deer reside, you’re sure to be able to take a visual inventory of bucks in the evenings.
In June, it’s still not so hot during the day that the bucks are nocturnal to avoid the heat. Although a pair of binoculars will suffice, a variable spotting scope will allow you to more closely inspect a buck’s antlers at longer distances.
Not only will you learn which bucks survived the previous hunting season, it will give you a starting point to backtrack the buck’s movements to their bedding areas. And, it may also give you a heads-up on trail entry points and stand locations for early bow season when bucks are still following summer feeding patterns.
Cameras
If you don’t have access to open agriculture fields, or you’re trying to figure out what bucks are doing in the timber, working several digital trail cameras will tell you a lot. Since summer food sources are so widely available and scattering other attractants will aid in putting a buck in front of your camera.
Water holes
One of my favorite camera sites is to build a watering hole in the woods away from other year-round water sources. A simple blue plastic “kiddie” pool is the cheapest route to go. Just drag the pool deep into the woods and dig a hole to put the top edge at ground level. Once buried, lay a couple of green branches slightly longer than the diameter of the pool so small critters that fall in can crawl out and prevent tainting the water.
Other summer attractants, such as a mineral block or protein feed station can also lure a buck into camera range, too.
Put some of these summer scouting methods to use now to up your chances of tagging a buck this fall.
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