5 Summer Scouting Tips to Help You Shoot a Buck This Fall

1. Trim Shooting Lanes

In summer, saplings and brush can grow up around your treestand, potentially blocking your shooting lanes. Don’t wait until the last minute to clear them out. Freshly cut vegetation just prior to the season can be a dead giveaway to deer, who are incredibly attuned to changes in their surroundings. Summer offers the ideal time to trim your lanes without the pressure of impending deer season deadlines.

More importantly, piling the brush in strategic places can drive deer past your stand along preferred deer trails, thus increasing your odds of getting a shot. Just remember to use OnX Hunt or other tools to make note of those locations on your digital topography maps so that when the season time comes, you won’t miss getting to those exact spots.

2. Impove Deer Bedding Areas

One of the most powerful tactics to improve bedding areas is to keep bucks on your property year-round. Bucks like bedding next to a natural barrier, like a blown-down tree or brush pile, in an area that provides comfort and security, which they often do. Using a rake, scrape up sticks and stones to clearly outline deer beds as part of your summer scouting. This simple action mirrors what deer will naturally do when selecting comfortable, secure places to bed.

By creating these beds in strategic locations, you can dictate where bucks want to bed. Consider creating these bedding areas relatively close to food sources to encourage more consistent deer movement patterns on your land.

3. Plant a Throw-and-Grow Brassica Food Plot

With a simple brassica food plot, you can make an easy, productive food source that will bring in deer during the early archery season. You certainly don’t have to be a professional farmer to grow one. Just find a piece of ground in a little clearing or open a spot between rows of corn, turn over the dirt, and sow the brassicas like turnips, radishes, and rape. These plants turn into a very attractive source after the harnessing of the first frost.

Timing is everything, so plant in early August before a rain. These plots can become a deer magnet once they are established and the timing is excellent regarding the natural shifts in deer behavior to transition from summer to fall feeding patterns.

4.  Trail Cameras – Keep Gathering Intel

That trail camera is one of the most powerful tools for summer scouting on deer. Most hunters wait until just before the season to get their cameras out, but the more information collected in bedding areas and on established deer trails for deer movement patterns is realized by deploying them in the summer.

Setup your cameras near food sources and mineral sites and watch velvet bucks grow. This very early intel allows you to create a “hit list” of target bucks and further refines your understanding of the property’s deer behavior. Be careful not to spook deer by only checking cameras no more than twice a month and always implementing scent control measures into your routine.

5. Spend Time Glassing for Deer

Many times, by the latter part of July, the bucks’ antlers have nearly reached maturity and, in fact, they are out in the daytime. The best way to preview deer is to spend some quality time looking from an elevated position over the landscape at the motion of deer in the fields of soybeans and alfalfa. Watch the bucks on these summer evening outings to let you see where the best field entry locations are, and how they respond to different winds.

Bach groups of velvet bucks can be commonly observed in the summer, offering a thrilling sneak peek at what is ahead in hunting season. Make carrying forward these observations into your hunting strategy by noting key fields and entry points your target bucks are most using.