In this blog, I’m going to highlight a couple of hunts where scouting and specific weather conditions played a significant role in creating an opportunity at a mature buck.  Obviously, scouting can take many forms.  E-scouting, off-season scouting, in-season scouting “boots on the ground”, scouting from a vehicle, and so on.   But I’m going to focus specifically on how scouting from a vehicle has played an important role in finding mature bucks.

The first example is a bow hunt from 2018.  It was mid-October and I’d spent the day editing videos and by the time I finished there was only an hour and a half of daylight left so instead of making a mad scramble for a short hunt I decided that my time would be better spent scouting from the vehicle. 

Watch Full Video Here

I hopped in my truck and drove to nearby public land with the plan to glass for deer in hopes of locating a mature buck to hunt in the coming days.  But on this particular scouting trip the recent weather also afforded an additional opportunity to gather intel since it had rained for the past couple of days and the ground was soft and muddy - making recent deer tracks easy to see.  

As I drove around I glassed for deer but also checked trails that crossed the road for big tracks, knowing that any track I found in the mud would mean it was very recent - within the last couple of days.  

Shortly into my scouting trip I pulled up to a well used trail crossing the county road that led out to a bean field.  As I exited the vehicle I could see there was a number of fresh tracks in the mud, but one stood out from the rest…a big track, 4 fingers wide that was clearly made by a mature buck.  

Bingo!  Now that I identified that a mature buck was in the area (recently) I followed the tracks a short ways to get an idea of where the buck was coming out of.  I could see the trail led across a CRP field through an open gate back into an overgrown pasture.  With that intel I hopped back in the truck and checked out a few more areas before heading home. 

A couple days later, I headed back to that spot with my longbow in hand.  As I worked my way towards the thick cover the tracks came out of I could see more big tracks passing through the narrow pinch point the open gate created.   It was a perfect situation.  Ted and I setup 15 yards from the gate and right at sunset a big-bodied, mature 9 pointer made his way out of the bedding area towards the open gate.  At 20 yards I started to come to full draw, but unfortunately the buck saw the upper limb of my longbow move above the cover I was hiding behind and he locked up and eventually slipped back into the cedars, never giving me a shot.  Even though I didn’t release and arrow, it was an exciting hunt.

Here’s another example.  This time it was Iowa’s late muzzleloader season and it had recently snowed.  The morning of January 5th was bitterly cold and calm.  I intended to go in early to hunt near a bedding area, however, the crunchy snow and dead calm conditions made it impossible to go anywhere into the woods without completely blowing out all the deer.  They would hear me coming from several hundred yards away. 

It didn’t make any sense to hunt and and as much as I wanted to crawl back into my warm bed I decided to drive around and scout from the truck for the first couple hours of the morning.  Shortly into my drive a big-antlered buck crossed the road right in front of me.  Narrowly missing the buck with the grill of my truck, I watched as he ran into public land.  

At this point it was nearly legal shooting light, so I assumed the buck was going to want to bed down soon, presumably somewhere close to where I watched him cross the road.  Later in the day it warmed up to the point the snow had softened so I slowly slipped into the woods where I last saw the buck that morning.   As I worked in deeper towards what I assumed was a bedding area I found several heavy trails beaten into the snow leading up over the ridge towards heavy cover. 

Watch Full Video Here

I carefully climbed 15 feet up a tree and got setup in my saddle overlooking 3 trails within easy muzzleloader range.   An hour later, deer started filtering over the ridge towards my setup, including a dandy 10 pointer with a split brow.  As he stepped into an opening at 40 yards I settled the crosshairs and dropped the hammer. The 250 grain Barnes Spitfire TMZ bullet zipped through both lungs and made for a spectacular blood trail in the snow.  Seventy five yards later Aaron, Ted, and I found him piled up, capping off the perfect end to the season.

As you can see, scouting takes on many forms.   Over the years we have found that driving around glassing and locating deer and finding fresh sign, especially mature buck sign, can pay off in a big way!  

Good luck scouting and hunting!

- Greg