How to Scout The Neighbor's Land, Respectfully

Keeping tabs on deer activity and environmental changes near your hunting land can pay dividends during the season. Photo by Bill Konway.

One summer day, I drove to an 80-acre woodlot where I’d shot some fine bucks through the years. I knew those ridges and flats like rooms in my house, so I planned only a cursory scout. When the acorns started dropping in late September, deer would come. I had them patterned, and already had several tree stands hung for their arrival.

As I hiked along, I spotted a glint through the trees. I hadn’t seen that before. I raised my binocular — aluminum siding, a piece of roof; a new house. I walked closer. They build them fast these days. A three-house subdivision had sprung up on the adjacent property since I’d last hunted there nine months ago.

I knew those new homes would change the patterns of the local deer, at least a little or maybe a lot, so to heck with a quick scout. I went into serious surveillance mode and walked the property boundary on my side of the fence.

Sure enough, things had changed. The ridges and draws that had always held deer trails and tracks summer and fall were barren of sign. I pressed on and eventually hit paydirt several hundred yards down the fence line. A creek that wended between two of the new home lots snaked into an oak bottom in the northwestern corner of my hunting area. Two main deer trails ran along the creek, and a shallow crossing was pocked with fresh, muddy tracks. I noted it all and a week later moved one of my stands 300 yards to an oak flat near the creek crossing. Later that October, I arrowed a heavy 8-pointer circling into the acorns from a new direction.

Houses, driveways, or you name it can pop up near your hunting area seemingly overnight. Agricultural crops come and go, and rotate from year to year. This activity does not drive deer out of their home ranges, but it affects their daily routines and travels. Along with scouting your hunting area, you should monitor what’s happening on adjacent and nearby properties within a mile or two.

Don’t Miss: Why the Good Old Days of Deer Hunting are Right Now

TAKE A DRIVE

Now is a good time to drive back roads and check on any major changes to the landscape and deer habitat. Look for new houses or roads carved into the woods. Check the fields within a few miles of your land. Those areas might be posted and off-limits, but it never hurts to look at them.

You might see the previous year’s soybean or corn field is now fallow. Or what was once a weed field has been tilled and planted with growing beans or alfalfa. Any habitat change like that will affect the bed-to-feed patterns of local deer at least a bit. Look for land-use changes now, and mark them on maps and aerials of the entire area. Study it for the next few months, and predict how those changes will affect where bucks feed, bed and travel where you hunt this fall. Plan your stand placement and access accordingly.

Check Out Our Latest Camo Pattern: Realtree APX

WILL THERE BE PRESSURE?

Did you sit in a stand on opening day of gun season this past year and hear booming shots on the next property? If so, ask around and see if the same guys will hunt that land this fall. Probably so. But you never know, a club might lose its lease, or a landowner might decide to stop all hunting on the place. Either way, it pays to know, because pressure, or lack of it, will dictate much of the deer behavior where you hunt.

Say you find that those same five or 10 guys will hunt the adjacent farm this season. Formulate a pressure plan. Study maps of the area. Check for cover-laced ridges, draws, creek drainages or other funnels that wend off the next property and into your zone. Hang stands along potential buck escape routes (on your side of the line, of course), and let those other guys drive deer to you during opening week.

Suppose you find that an adjacent farm or woodland will be tightly posted this fall. No pressure there creates a deer sanctuary. Scout and set two or three stands in thickets on your side of the fence a reasonable distance from the sanctuary. The more mast and green browse in and around the thickets, the better. The food and cover make your stands huntable mornings and evenings.

Hunt those stands in a rotational pattern throughout the season, moving around every few days and weeks to minimize your scent and presence. Since there is little to no pressure in the woods, you are guaranteed to see deer, and some bucks. With a little luck, one day a 10-pointer will ease out of the sanctuary and onto the land where you’re set up. Get him, and it will be in large part because you made the effort to find out what was happening on the other side of the fence.