After I gave up being a member of a family group that only made drives when hunting whitetails, I discovered that “stump sitting” wasn’t much better if I didn’t have any idea where to sit during a hunting season. I thus began my first of more than 60 years of hunting by trying to determine where I’d be likely to take a mature buck, called “pre-hunt scouting.”

Before long, I discovered that current locations of the biggest of bucks had everything to do with where does in heat would currently be bedding and feeding (which can change daily during hunting seasons). When does weren’t in heat, it had everything to do with where older bucks bedded and currently fed. This narrowed my searching for productive stand sites to the edges of bedding and feeding areas, rather than well-used deer trails, unless they are adjacent to bedding or current favorite feeding areas. That’s because whitetails have dozens of other trails they can use to get to bedding and feeding areas, the selection depending on wind direction and which trails are currently safe—not tainted with fresh human trail scents, fresh human airborne scents or ATV odors and tracks.

Though I took several trophy-class bucks at their bedding areas over the years, if such a buck discovered me there or nearby and escaped, it was generally gone for the rest of the hunting season. I therefore began keeping well away from buck bedding areas until the final day or two of a hunting season. This left me with three worthwhile stand sites to search for while scouting before or during the hunting season.

Feeding areas vary, depending on the time of the year you are hunting. My northern Minnesota whitetails always quit eating green grasses and leaves and begin eating stems of certain woody shrubs, saplings and young trees (known as “browse”) about the beginning of the second week in November. Where I hunt, their favorite winter browse is red-bark dogwood bushes and red stems growing from stumps of logged sugar maples. You are unlikely to find fresh whitetail hoofprints or droppings in browse areas in September or October, although they’re likely to become favorite browse areas in November. However, the tops of stems on such shrubs will be loaded with shaggy brown or black tops—evidence of much browsing during the previous November and later—and are therefore likely to be a favorite browse area this November.

About the beginning of the second week in November, especially if snow covers the ground, current favorite browse areas are easier to identify; they’re having lots of fresh, off-trail deer tracks and fresh (shiny) deer droppings. Urine in snow with spots of blood in it is the urine of a doe in heat, sure to be accompanied by a dominant breeding buck—but only during the 24 to 26 hours it is in heat. The tops of stems of favorite, freshly browsed plants will have very distinctive white tips. Most current favorite browse areas are only good for 1 to 3 successive half-days of hunting, because hunters are not skilled and discrete enough to avoid being discovered there by mature whitetails longer than that.

While scouting pre-season, therefore, I always search for enough browse areas to enable me to switch to new stand sites at least once every one-half to two days. My whitetails also gorge on red oak acorns each fall, generally beginning one windy day in late August, however. That means they will not often be seen in among red oaks in November unless it’s one of those years when it is unusually warm, and no snow covers the ground.

Bedding areas of does are generally large (up to 20 acres in size), somewhat open and irregularly shaped because maternal does minimize odors of bedded fawns by changing fawn bedding spots once or twice daily. They are fond of bedding in deep grasses that hide fawns in mixed cover, including brush and trees of various sizes. Identifying deer signs are fawn beds measuring up to 35 inches long, yearling doe beds measuring 38 inches long, and mature doe and yearling buck beds measuring 40 to 42 inches in length.

Because whitetails empty their bowels upon rising from their beds, doe bedding areas generally have quite a few deer droppings on the ground ranging from 1/4-inch-long fawn droppings to 1/2-inch-long droppings made by mature does and yearling bucks, which are about the same size.

In fall, however, like droppings of older bucks, yearling buck droppings cling together, forming clumps. Clumped droppings up to an inch or more in length in a doe bedding area were made by the dominant breeding buck while accompanying a doe while she was in heat. If these one-inch dropping are shiny, that buck is probably accompanying that doe right now.

Does in heat are usually bred up to four times in their bedding areas, each time getting up and moving around and becoming visible for a short period. I have taken quite a few dominant breeding bucks following a doe around in her bedding area during midday hours, but more in feeding hours early in the day and fewer late in the day. Remember, though, each doe is only in heat 24 to 26 hours during the two-week periods that does are in heat in early November, early in December and the last few days of December. Whenever you discover deer urine spotted with blood during a hunting season, mature buck-sized hooves being dragged from track to track in snow (meaning the buck is smelling pheromone emitted by a doe in heat), mature-buck-sized tracks accompanying mature doe-sized tracks adjacent to a feeding area or doe bedding area, begin stand hunting there. Sit on a stool where well concealed and downwind or crosswind immediately, later the same day or no later than early the following morning.

After that, hunt somewhere else. This might seem like a strange recommendation, but my 65 years of studying and hunting bucks 4 1/2 years of age or older in Minnesota’s Arrowhead Region has taught me a lot of strange truths about these deer.

One or two out of three, for example, are impossible or nearly impossible to successfully hunt—the reason my sons and I have each long started our hunting seasons with at least three mature bucks to hunt. These bucks that taught us the following:

• It is a waste of time to use the same stand to hunt them for an entire hunting season and year after year.

• The most productive of stand sites are completely natural and were never used before.

• It is unwise to believe that so-called scent killers and cover scents keep these bucks from being able to identify us via our airborne odors and trail scents.

• They can now recognize the difference between store-bought doe-in-heat pheromones and pheromones emitted by real live does.

• They can now identify stand hunters up to 35 feet above the ground in trees.

• They can quickly learn to identify and avoid hunters using ATVs, calls, rattling antlers, lures, and baits including foods, minerals and food plots.

• Where wolves have been allowed to become abundant enough to seriously reduce deer numbers, nearly all surviving older bucks and many older does are the most difficult of whitetails for both wolves and deer hunters to successfully hunt.

Therefore, it now takes an extraordinary amount of good luck or knowledge and hunting skills to take a trophy-class buck. When you take one, you have a right to be very proud of it.

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