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As late as the season is this year, bucks may have laid up a bit already and without the yellow acorns from the 4-wheeler brigade, they'll need to be on their feet more than normal.
Transition edges and beaver pond edges is where I like to focus. If there's been any restorative grouse management activity, that's another good place to poke and prod as that's about the only sort of cutting that seems to be done in the NF.

The Hunt Wisconsin app from DNR has a feature for grouse hunters that shows the aspen stands that are 5-20 yrs old on state and county land. The same information can be found on DNR website under the FFLIGHT program

Those spots would be on my list for exploration

Hunt scrapes if you can find them.

Yes, in my experience, good grouse habitat is also good deer habitat. Anything over about four feet tall is getting pretty worthless to deer and that was my issue hunting poplar (aspin) regenerating areas after logging operations up in Marinette County because they grew up so quickly. The cover was still there, but the visibility was really limiting. A buddy took a nice 8 out from a very high tree perch in front of another hunter walking through that never realized that the deer or my buddy was there.

Yes, scrapes and rubs are about the best indicators that you are onto an area with at least one buck. A darn good indicator of the size of the buck that made it too. Big bucks might rub small stuff, but small bucks don't rub big stuff.

My experience here (northern Maine) regarding scrapes is....they make them never to return. Too big of an area and too few does. They roam and roam and roam.

What I"ve seen, small bucks do rub big trees. They are attracted to the scent deposited and rub them regardless the size.

I posted this last year.

My late FIL watched a fork horn make a rub like that in Ashland Co, WI about 10 years ago.

Posting these for windfall:

Used to hunt the forests in NY and scouting out a southern NF is a whole nother animal. It's all swamp

I would agree with you. Swamp edges, tag alders, popple regrowth...all good for both!

hahaa

I hunted the family hunting camp property and was the top dog in terms of taking game...
BUT Grandpa taught me where to sit based on game patterns they learned 40 years earlier.
Then I joined the Military and started hunting public land...
It took me 5+ years to figure it out - mostly I got my head right when I wasn’t seeing deer and game and wanted to get back to where I was on my own land.

Here is what I learned...

SCOUT, SCOUT, SCOUT,....

1) Walk the edge of every field edge, and Creek and look for deer runs, then walk the runs end to end to find out where they are coming from.
Lacking fields, walk the transition areas between hardwoods (acorns) to find the runs.

2). Understand when you are on a heavy run and it disappears in the hardwoods you have hit a foreage area and the deer spread out to eat acorns... (excellent ambush site)

3). Corners and Fingers - walk them to see where those runs go in them - you should have already found them via walking the fields / transition areas.
IF you miss hitting one - go investigate it.

4). Mast (acorns) - the good ones follow the place the water was right ... lots of water look high on the ridge, little water the runs shift to the bottoms.

5). Does = runs, bucks use a path 15-20 yards off the run.

6) Figure out the food vs. bedding area... Go out in the morning - they are walking into the bedding area... in the evening they are heading to the food...

7). White oak / Burr Oaks —. If you see one mark it - Deer will go a half mile out of thier way to check for fallen bur oak year, after year...

8). Open hardwood runs vs. thick stuff... if they can’t smell due to wind they take open woods so they can see... no / low wind = thick

9). Very few people hunt more than a half mile in, so deer density there picks up... I use a cart, wear light gear, and put heavy gear in a bag and put it on before I get into my stand.

10). Scrubby cut downs - deer LOVE them...

11). Light rain - Go stalking, walk really slow and you’ll kick up things that “see or smell you” they can not hear year.

12). Spitting - (especially sunflower seeds) - If you want to enjoy the deer less woods (or screw up someone’s stand) just leave a bunch of spit smell...
I took a guy hunting with me 4 years and I would shoot deer, he’d never see one, even when swapping stands.... So I asked him if I could walk with him to the stand and see how he sets up... he was spitting seeds... Next day I said leave them at home and use my stand... Boom.. his first deer.

13). DO NOT touch anything with your hands - use your elbows to push brush out of the way

14)... watch for LOTs of fat squirrels - that’s a food area, go check those out.... same with turkey scrapes.

A public thank you to SK for posting those pics. I suppose a little one could rub bigger stuff, but that sure wasn't the case with this guy. I only saw him once and he was R-E-A-L nice. I appreciate all the tips on scouting a new area.

Yep, that is some good spit.
Still laughing.

Good luck, Windfall.

Tracking a buck in the north woods is the most exciting, rewarding hunting there is... right up there with being on the track of a bull elk in the mountains.

Agreed, and it was how I got my biggest bull elk, but you need the right kind of woods. Back in my youth I read everything I could lay my hands on about tracking and even had Larry Benoit sign one of his books for me. The problem of deer tracking in NE WI. was that they logged it so often that there was a logging road and another deer hunter on a stand up ahead so you tracked "your" deer right into someone else. I saw a statistic that if you had an army the size of all the WI. deer hunters, you would have the sixth largest army in the world!