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

ol mike. Do you have a boat?

Yes , a 13' Gheenoe 2.5 & 6hp Yamaha engines. I used to hunt way back in swamps of NW FL. South Alabama with it.


I found some good sign yesterday , trails funnel down to a low thick spot where they cross the road. I looked on Google Earth and found a few spots of narrow woods that were close to some farms with some good size fields & cleared land.

I look at Google Earth and Arkansas game/fish conservation maps. I've found two more places yesterday that according to AGFConservation are public hunting land -but someone has posted it as private property. These are CR /County Road with a number. The County Road Maintenance office , AFGC and the Army Corp. of Engineers -none of them do anything about this.

The reason I ask is because I looked at the maps of that area you talked about and seen some places that I'd definately access by boat small boat/flat bottom or Gheenoe .
I'd stay on the AGFC about that posting thing. most likely someone or small group of "someones" found a honey hole and are playing games to hopefully keep other people out. I've seen it before. Good luck and shoot ol big.

I'd double verify that it is indeed public and hunt behind the signs...

I use to hunt Sylamore. I found areas that had deer but much of it is a wildlife desert. The big tracts of open mature timber are a waste of time. Look at the areas that have been burned in the.past or logged and are growing back up. I avoided places other people had flagging tied out. It is a young mans place.

I only hunt public land these days. And I try and hunt as close as possible to private fields. I tend to gravitate towards ravines with wide flat bottoms that have hardwoods and water in them, with heavy cover up on the high ground, and fields close by. They just tend to get a lot of deer and turkey traffic. Water, mast, thick cover and open fields all nearby. But this year, and last year, has been tough. I've only been out a few times for deer this season. I've noticed that there is very little mast this season where I deer hunt. And there was just none last season. And earlier in the season, there was very little water in the ravines due to abnormally low rainfall, though there is water now. No acorns, no beech nuts, and sometimes no water. I have seen a few does with fawns traveling but not stopping to eat. But no bucks. I hunted squirrels on a different WMA earlier this fall and that area did have acorns. But I just don't hunt deer there. Where I do hunt deer, the mast crop was a bust.

I also hunt where hound-hunting is legal. My weekend strategy, when the clubs tend to be more active, I tend to hunt a bit differently. I'll hunt right next to the thickest cover I know of. I've picked off more than a few deer that were driven to thick cover by other peoples dogs. It's uncanny how a buck will dive into cover that is so thick that you can scarcely get through it. Something you can't see 10 feet into it. An absolute tangled mess of blackberries, Devils Walking Sticks, small pines is nothing to a buck. They move through it like it's not even there. Intercepting deer driven into these areas can be productive.

Here is a ravine I hunted today. On a slope leading down into a ravine. Small creek at the bottom. Thick pines on high ground on either side. A private field beyond the pines on the far side of the ravine in the pic. Just no mast in the ravine. Hopefully it won't be a bust next season, too.

I left the 2 gamecams out for 2 1/2 weeks in the best area i could find. 2 pictures of a doe around 9:30pm.
Bow season is open until Feb.28th but I'm not wasting anymore gas this year.
I think whitetails migrate out of old growth forest in the winter.

Hunt fields late season

Hunt fields on public land and about the only thing you will watch is the grass growing.

Set cams up within 200 yards of parking lots and see what happens. Maybe even within 100 yards if there is suitable cover.

You will be surprised.

Fields here are dead brown, very rocky ground here.
They bite every top off of the greenbriar stickers in the fall, nothing regrows on them until spring.
I read of guys spending a few hours cutting high limbs off with a pole-saw so the deer can get at the buds.
A deer would starve to death in this old growth wonderland.
I can't think of any places like parking lots in SylamoreWMA

Agreed Mike, my national forest deer wouldn't know what a field looks like. While there aren't a lot of deer per square mile in the big woods, there are some. The best stand sites that I've ever found, I found by taking a big track during the gun season and following it. Security is job one for a deer that knows that there are people around and it doesn't take very long for them to go nocturnal. One of the better strategies that I've found is to know where guys are coming in from and hunt the thicker escape cover where the deer are getting pushed into. There is lots of tall maple where I go and that is pretty useless to deer. That security cover is the thick stuff that has browse and I've had to get high in a tree stand to cover it effectively. I'd look at a Google Map overview to pick out different timber types and pinch point funnels of your area and then its boots on the ground taking into consideration prevailing wind direction for a possible stand site. A big flat woods is going to be hard to hunt if there isn't some edge and topography changes. Deer aren't all that complicated and they only move to get fed, bred or bed. I've hunted lots better areas than I do now, but the accommodations are outstanding and deer just aren't as important to me as they once were.

Find some spots where they do controlled burns late this winter and check them out early fall next year. The best concentrations of deer I found there were in the areas that had been burned in the last couple of years. I hunted the East side near the entrance from Calico Rock. Around the old Experimental deer pen if there is any evidence of it left . I hunted Sylamore 25 years ago.

If it were me I’d look for whatever security cover is there and set up over the bedding areas.

Hordes of hunters hunt the burned off areas especially in bow season. The deer only move at night then.
Scouting during the summer and early fall is useless because as we start getting close to season we've educated the deer. It's often quite warm here so the deer don't mind moving/feeding in the dark.
I put my bow and other hunting stuff away last week.

When I hunted Sylamore there weren't many hunters using it. Too steep and most of the roads are on top of the hills.

You can be sure of 2 things: when oaks are dropping acorns, deer will find them if there are deer in the zip code; and when rifle/shotgun season is happening, deer will go to areas where there are not gun hunters. Like starting the first day.

I agree.

I took a long stroll Sunday with my CZ-22lr looking for tracks in the fresh snow.
No tracks, no squirrels, but did see a couple of small birds in a cedar patch, laf.
All critters vacate the mature hardwood forest once the mast is picked over.