In the business world in which I work, we talk frequently about strengths and weaknesses. The idea is that we should play to our strengths as much as possible and manage around our weaknesses. We can then take that a step further to determine how we can use our weaknesses to our advantage. For example, I’m not naturally good at math and numbers and stuff, which is a problem working in the financial services industry. What that also means I get to do the jobs with words and writing (a skill at which I am less bad than math) that most of my math-nerd colleagues don’t want to do. Weakness, meet advantage.
Basic Hunters don’t have a ton of true strengths when it comes to hunting. We don’t have a lot of time. We don’t have exclusive access to pristine deer property. What’s a basic hunter to do? Turn those weaknesses into advantages.
If you listen to a lot of the ‘killers’ out there in the whitetail zeitgeist, a common theme you will hear is to scout more than you hunt, particularly if you don’t have exclusive access to quality private land. This is sound advice, and I have found myself scouting way more than I actually hunt over the last few years. Yes, I want to find the absolute best spot and put myself in position to kill a target deer. It’s also because I can turn a weakness into an advantage.
Let’s face it, any hunt you or I go on is going to take three to four hours. That’s realistically the least amount of time it would take for me to drive to any of my spots, hike in, set up, hunt with enough meaningful time on stand, then hike out and head home. Most of my hunts require more than three hours if I’m being honest. Now, some of that time may be less busy than others (i.e. getting up at 4 AM when the rest of the world is asleep), but if I take a step back at my schedule for the months of October and November, I am hard-pressed to find an open four hour window of time. I have to pick my spots extremely carefully and jump at them when they show up.
Enter scouting. While it might take four hours to hunt, I can take a quick scouting trip on my lunch break in the span of an hour no problem. I can take a two hour hike on a game land track at the break of dawn. Heck, even just taking a short detour past a nearby field of beans or cut corn to simply see what’s out feeding only takes an extra 10 minutes of my day.
Conditions for a Quick Scouting Trip
The first consideration is time. I find that the middle of the day is one of the best times to scout simply because you are least likely to bump deer and there is time for your scent to dissipate. I also like to scout either right before or right after a rain storm. Scouting directly after a rain storm reveals incredibly fresh sign (i.e. if a scrape has been freshly worked, you know a buck has likely been in the area since it has rained). Scouting during or directly before a rain storm washed away your scent. The same idea applies with scouting during high winds; your sound will be covered.
When I started seeing how I could use my weakness of time to my advantage by looking for opportunities to scout, scout, scout, I realized I could be that much more confident in those few times when I do get the chance to hang from a saddle. All these quick scouting trips build my confidence and also help me get better at hunting since I learn something new each time. For example, I had an opening in my work schedule around midday earlier this week, so I ran over to a local game lands for a quick walk. I have cameras out on this parcel, but cameras only show what’s happening in a very small area.
Here’s what I found.
Two massive, chest-high rubs right next to a track that started at the tip of my finger and dew claws near the bottom of my hand.
That gets my adrenaline pumping as we start to enter the pre-rut timeframe. This sign is most likely being made at night since it is near an open fallow field leading to private ag land. This is proved out by the fact that the track and rub directions were going away from the bean field back toward the swamp. Now I know there is a big old swamp donkey somewhere in the area. If you get a window of time to scout, turn your weakness into an advantage. A word of caution: I pulled 39 ticks off of me in this hour trek. No, that’s not a typo. Thirty-nine. Check for ticks!