Speed Scouting for Deer Season

 Fall is here everyone!  It's gotten a little chilly down here in central NC, especially after Sally came through and brought so much rain.  Either way, for those of you who see my social media posts, you know I've had quite the last few months!  Graduating college, starting a new full time job, and welcoming a new daughter!  

That doesn't leave a lot of time to scout for the upcoming deer season to pinpoint new spots.  If you're pretty familiar with the property, then great, head start!  You may not need to find out where deer hang out on the property, as you may have that down.  But, there may be new bucks in the area or some new patterns individuals may have.  So, keep your cameras going!

If you're unfamiliar with the area you're hunting, like trying out public land, then you need to get started quick!  Hunting apps like HuntStand or OnXMaps are really useful here to get a grip on an aerial view to identify possible pinch points and routes to and from food/bedding.  On the ground, if you find an oak ridge, or a flat spot between two slopes where there's an oak stand, great!  Or, maybe is a lower area between to slopes where deer may travel from bedding to food.  Look for natural barriers that may attract deer movement.  

If you're hunting a smaller property, like so many suburban hunters, deer are likely in the thick stuff.  Deer love the thicker sanctuaries because quite frankly, they don't have many other places to go.  And that's also where people are less common.  Bottom areas where there is a creek with woods and some thicker undergrowth is a good place to start when trying to find deer, as often those sites aren't buildable and therefore are left alone. Where law allows, you can possibly attract deer and hold them on a smaller property with some corn feeding or even a mineral site.  Quite possibly a small food plot can be planted and if well managed, you're in the gold.  But that's more of a long term thing, we're talking speed scouting!

Again, you're speed scouting, trying to narrow down quickly where deer are and aren't.  Not only scan for landmarks and land/food qualities, but be on the lookout for any rubs, scrapes, or beds in the area.  It's amazing how often you will stumble onto stuff like that.  When you see something of note, mark down that spot!  If you do so, patterns may start to emerge on the map that you may not have noticed otherwise.

Deer Society "Mr.Maybe" Video Highlight

As I sit here on a Friday evening listening to the rain pour down on the North Carolina countryside, and thinking about the buck I saw in the front yard this morning, I got an itch to watch some hunting videos.  Yeah yeah "you might be a hunter if (fill in the blank)".  That may be a good idea to try sometime, let me know in the comments if you have a "You might be a hunter if..."!  But seriously, if you can't hunt during deer season, do the next best thing: watch footba, I mean, hunting videos.  So, here's a thought.  I'm going to be posting some video's of hunts/stories with the tactics they use to get the deer, and provide my thoughts.  With my own story of Prince last year, I may do a little video of my own if that appeals to anyone!  I don't have any hunt footage, but I can share pictures and narrate my story!

Normally the video's will be fairly short, though this one is a little more than 10 minutes, but worth the watch to me.  So here's my video highlight pick, a video by Deer Society of a buck called Mr.Maybe :

The tactic of using buck scent, in addition to the water source, is a fantastic setup.  Given the conditions of drought, in combination with the fact he was a dominate buck, just shows how a little ingenuity can tip the odds in your favor.  Being the dominate buck, he would need a challenger to face him for him to even be interested.  But he knew all the bucks in the area.  So by using unfamiliar scent in his core area, it nagged and annoyed the buck.  Which was the bucks undoing, and the arrow that shot him literally had his name on it.

Hope you like this new spin on things.  I plan on bringing out a couple more video's in the future, in addition to telling you about my trip to Montana back in the summer!  Keep hunting!

Wildgame Innovations Mirage 14

Last year I decided to buy a new game camera because the ones I have are wearing out.  After shopping around a little at Dicks, and with the help of a sales associate, I decided to buy the WGI Mirage 14.  In brief, I am very pleased with this camera.

Excuse my cell phone being reflected by camera

User Interface

The camera is very simple to operate, you use up, down, and enter keys to make selections.  And you see what you select on the screen.  Normally at the top of the screen the camera will show many pictures have been taken and the time, but with no SD card inserted when the above image was taken, nothing was shown.
You can set it to take pictures day and night, or just day or night.  You can select the quality of the pictures, the higher quality, the fewer pictures that can be stored on the SD card.  The tradeoff is better quality pictures allow you to pick out details of individual animals and just better viewing quality.  However, if you were just planning on leaving your camera out for weeks at a time without checking it, say in the spring and summer at a food plot, then for just scouting and deer census, lower quality/more volume of pictures might be more useful.
On top of that, you can adjust camera light exposure, how sensitive the motion sensor is, and how often it takes a pic, even set it for (soundless) video.  The customization of the camera is one of the big selling points for me.

Performance

The performance is very good in my opinion.  It is a 14 MP camera with less than a 1/2 second trigger speed with an illumination range of 75 feet, and an invisible flash (specs from WGI website).  I've already shown some pictures taken by this camera on the blog, but here's a few more just to show.

The video is bright (and sped up!), yes.  I don't know whether it's the camera's fault or my own.  Facing the camera angling down toward the ground might have caused the light to reflect back towards the camera, making it really bright.  I'll have to experiment more to find out.  However, having the capability of video is always a nice feature.

 

This owl seemed to like this perch

And this fox likes the mineral block

So, theres a little taste of the camera.  I'd highly recommend it to anyone looking for a new game camera.  Right now it's about $70, but you might be able to find it cheaper.  Until next time!

The Season Approaches

It's almost hunting season!  Are you ready?  I know I'm not, as far a prep goes!  BUT, here's a few things to help rev up for the season:

• Glass fields and crops such as soybeans at dusk.  It's also a great way just to sit out in nature and enjoy it, take someone with you too!
• Put out trail cameras.  I have a camera out, I need to check it :) I've been away lately, but I can't wait to see what it has captured in pictures!  As far as trail cameras go, look for patters in activity.  If you have consistent pictures of deer at 8am and 5pm during the summer, then during the early season they should still be following that same pattern.  Thus, you know when you should be in your stand.
• Shoot!  Shoot your rifle, shotgun, your bow.  Sight in the scope.  Pattern your shotgun and perfect that lead by shooting some skeet.  While shooting your bow; perfect your anchor point and release, not to mention arrow grouping.

Enjoy your prep time!  Can't wait for fall!

Prep For Hunting Season

Hunting season is just around the corner!  While summer is a great time to fish and swim in pools, it's also a great time to get outdoors in the woods and prepare.  Here's a list of things that you can do to prep for the final weeks till the season:

• Backyard bow practice!  Start drilling on your form, aim, release, and follow-through.  Backyard bowhunts are another fun thing.  You put out a target (a 3D makes it a WHOLE lot funner!) and you start from one side of your yard, and creep up on the target, and make a shot.  You practice your skills for a stalk or still hunt.  You can also do this on a treestand.  Go up, sit like normal, then act like the target you set up, say, a deer, walks into view.  Slowly stand up and draw, aim, release, and follow-through.
• Scout!  Look for tracks, trails, browsed plants.  Food sources, bedding areas, you name it!  If you can locate a trail that is close to bedding and food sources for around the year, your set!  For example, one place that I'm looking at putting a stand is close to a trail that passes oaks, a greenbriar patch (which deer like to eat), and bedding.  And when it rains, a small ditch actually makes a temporary pond.  Perfect spot for a stand! Which leads me to my next point...
• Hang Stands!  Looks for spots like what I mentioned above.  Not only that, but bedding near creeks, trails, food sources, near corn fields, and so on.  
• Sight in your gun!  If you don't sight in your rifle, you won't hit anything.  Not only that, but practice with it, let it become almost a part of you since your so good at handling it.
• Put out trail cams!  (I'm repeating myself) Near trails, bedding, food sources, mineral licks, so on.

Other things that I'll leave out of the "big" list is establishing mineral licks and food plots.  Now, food plots are meant to complement natural food sources, not replace them.  You might could just seed a place with naturally occurring seeds, or let the plants come up by themselves.  Sometime food plots can be a pear tree, or an oak stand.  They don't have to be a lawn of clover.  And they are not necessarily necessary to have a great hunt!  I just do a little bit of it because I enjoy doing it.

Stay safe, get your licence, and get ready to hunt!  Until next time!

Recent Camera Pictures

Well, I had a camera out last week, and pulled it out to see what I got.  It took fewer pictures than I thought, but I did get some valuable ones.

Note: The deer like to play hide and seek in these pictures.  If I made them bigger, they would take up half of the page.

The deer is toward the center of the picture, behind the big tree.

Look where the big fallen tree and thick tree meet.  It's a fawn (the head at least).

It's a nice finding game right?  But anyway, sorry I can't make them bigger, but I hope you guys enjoy them!

Enjoying Snow

It's snowing where I live in NC.  Really cool stuff.  Me and my family played in it, sledding and all.  I also went on a very short scouting trip.  More to just take a walk in the woods than anything else.  I went to look for tracks, trails, anything.  But just enjoying tromping through the snow and enjoying God's creation was enough.  Sometimes, that's just what you need to do.  But, tomorrow morning, just for fun, I'm going to look at tracks, along with play time!