Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Scouting public land hardwood forest .

dismal .

Two Browning game cams going for 2ish weeks and lots of walking way back in rough thick areas where i'm sure nearly nobody goes. Two deer pictures a few hours after dark , couple of squirrels and a Heinz 57th dog.
Several hours and 4.3 miles spent yesterday and saw one deer track about the size of a tennis ball.
Talked to a game warden a while back , he said very few deer are taken on public land like Sylamore/Norfork Lake WMA's . I can see why.
I did see a possum track down at the lake shore-line.
Heard one squirrel and saw another about 100 yards away sprint out of sight.
Did a couple of Calling sets - zilch.
Darn-well makes me question Arkansas Fish&Game management practices.
I read how much they burn-off per year- basically nothing. And I've scouted food plots that don't seem to get any activity.
I've walked the entire perimeter of many of the plots and there's not a trail coming into the plots.
Hardwood rocky forest areas make for tough hunting. <-- FYI.

Forgot to say this was a 10K acre 'archery only' area for big game.
Rimfires allowed for small game.

Lot of Virginia is like that. Tens of thousands of acres of public land in a area. Mostly mature hardwood trees and not a lot of food. Gotta find the food they're on at that time or good crossing spots. Low saddle on a top , couple ridges together, water source . Little over a month ago i walked 6 1/2 miles one morning during muzzleloader season. Only rub i saw was where I parked the truck and not a single scrape . Same time last year it was full of deer but it was a lot of acorns that year.

Yep. Both cameras were on choke points , good trail but no tracks.
Last week I went to a spot loaded with acorns- quite a few squirrels uprooting them but no deer sign.
I've never paid real close attention to when the mast drops- but it seems to have happened early this year. It was raining acorns in early September ?

Do you have a MacDonnel nearby? 🤣

Ain't none of your business

Since you can’t find any deer , the McRib IS BACK

Thx for the info , go make yourself a slushyWhip

Totally different area but... My whole strategy with bush/ public land deer is as follows.

I just hike around and look for pockets with lots of sign, if your deer dont yard up for the winter the best time for this is post season until about mid Jan depending on snow buildup. My own recipe is to start with places where a ridge and an edge exist in close proximity and explore the surrounding area. I'm not putting out cams and I'm not looking for buck sign, I'm just looking for the best concentrations of sign. When the rut hits, does will be the commodity and if you concentrate on the pockets of deer activity you stand a good chance of crossing paths with a buck. Since you dont want to scare your resident deer off, I want to have a number of these spots that I can rotate through.

When the early season hits I'm covering lots of ground, things will always change in the bush so I'm re-checking old areas as well as hunting new ones. By November I've generally got my options narrowed down to a handful of areas that I rotate through, still hunting much slower through the most promising places.

This^^^^

I do something similar in TN. I like where 2 or more cover types converge (i.e. clearcut - hardwood, laurel- clearcut, old logging-hardwood, etc). I like terrain funnels in those same areas. An old logging road running through adjacent to doe bedding areas can be gold toward the end of Oct, early Nov. Steep hollows that peter out towards the top of the mountain, benches, etc. I like any/all of these features adjacent to thick cover and known doe bedding. Bucks cruise these areas.

Non-rut needs to focus on food. In my mind finding food sources is key to finding deer. Finding food sources in a million acres of similar looking hardwoods is tough...... esp given deer like unique area specific foods.

It was quite an adjustment for me moving from NW PA to E TN. The deer density is an order of magnitude different. It's not uncommon for me to see 10-15 deer an evening in PA. Saw 22 last night..... 10-15 deer in a season in E TN is average - but admittedly I hunt a bit less intensely in TN than I do in PA. East TN reminds me of elk hunting in the west. Every day starts with a 1-2 mile hike and a 5-1500 foot climb. Then you might see a couple deer

Good luck.

Very little mast on my little WMA this season. I didn’t hunt much, but was told by those I encountered on the last day of the early doe season that practically no one saw anything. On the rifle opener, I only heard a few shots, and a warden told me he’d only seen a couple come out with deer.

With few acorns to feed on, it’s an easy stroll across the river that borders the WMA to croplands, so I figure that’s where they were. The food plots hadn’t grown much due to the very dry weather.

Look for tickets, greenbrier and honey suckle.
Find the sign and hunt that. Pull a map and see what’s on the out skirts. What may be green right now to eat. Canopy openings with have more browse. Look at the satellite images.

10k acres is a good bit of ground. I’d spend time looking for sign.

I used to hunt a lot of public land. They are where they eat. Also if the land is close to or bordered by private blocks that are being baited you are going to have a hard time finding them browsing natural forage. They will but they are also going to that easy meal regularly. Find the travel route and hunt it. I wouldn't set up 20 yards from the line or nothing that close but somewhere around 50 to 100+ wouldn't phase me.
I hunt one large tract of public that's over 5000 acres that is completely surrounded by private. If you want to see deer and kill deer you better catch them going to or coming from the food plots/feeders that are on the private. I see very few deer in the middle. They are almost always close to the property lines/ borders. Just the way it is where I'm at.
We hunt feeders at our private land. It's a must. All the neighbors run feeders, so if we don't guess who sees all the deer.

Tzone and I were having this very discussion this week regarding scouting in the National Forest lands in northern WI. All hardwood isn't the same and where I hunt lately there is a lot of mature maple which is pretty useless for deer brouse. Few if any mast producing trees tell me that I should be looking for areas with heavier bedding cover with lower growing vegetation. That kind of area limits visibility and I'm afraid that I've gotten better at finding areas where the nocturnal deer go making tracks and sign after dark than finding them where they are during the day. People, weather and the rut moves deer, but hunting solo I can't depend on any of those things in a big woods with limited access. Tzone has been more successful than I have been finding multiple areas with multiple possible stand locations. He reports that he will probably be out scouting today because there is snow up north and the deer tracks are there printing it out for a guy. Today I'm watching football and attending Christmas parties with the wife. I think that there is a lesson there and come to think about it, I shot lots more deer back when I was single and scouting more.

Pre- or post-rut, don’t stand hunt solo unless there are other hunters providing the pressure for you. You’ll be far better off still hunting.

Spent yesterday scouting areas with considerable cleared land/fields nearby. Found a few good trails with fresh tracks -since it rained a couple days ago.
Going 'way back' in the woods doesn't work , there's always more sign closer to homes/cleared land.
I walked a couple of Plots Arkansas Game/Fish do , you can hardly see any soil- only rocks. < Total waste of $$$ and time.
And people complain if AGFConservation removes a few acres of trees.

Saw a huge dead boar hog the buzzards were dining on, should have got a picture of it. About 3'' tuck , whopper head I don't think the head/neck would fit in a 5gal. bucket. Bare minimum 250lbs. .
Appears that only the backstraps were taken.

My old buddy his sons do that kill it take the back straps leave the rest in the woods..

When you are on land that is old growth you have to hunt the things like elk. Putting cameras for elk year round just isn't a thing. Keep moving until you find deer, then put out cameras. If you don't find deer its time to find other places to hunt.

Some pigs are totally left. Some are totally taken. Depends on smell. Its no loss for a pig though overall. Tends to be the big boars typically smell bad and if they do they won't eat well unless you are starving. There are plenty more pigs out there.

Serious ? Are there no wanton waste laws concerning wild hogs. Treated as pest basically?

In Arkansas you can legally leave them lay because many carry bad bad diseases that can transfer to humans.

Edit'
It's been my experience that the vast majority of Feral hogs are NOT good to eat. Good means it tastes and smells good.
In 9 years of being in a hunting lease in NW Florida , killing 4-5 hogs per year > 1 < tasted good !! A couple of others were tolerable when I soaked the meat in an ice slurry Dollar Store Mountain Dew type drink.
I would lash them to a tree then cut through hide in several places to make it easy for varmints to get an easy -last meal.