How To Find Deer In The Big Woods of PA - Deer Scouting Tips

Mitchell Shirk of the Pennsylvania Woodsman Podcast and John Kolb of Suffering Outdoors team up to do some big woods scouting in PA. They scout a public piece of ground and share what they find as well things they look for while breaking down public ground. Mitch had multiple cameras out since the beginning of hunting season. We pull those cameras in this video and we’re shocked with some of the pictures we discovered.

[@Kurtdog63]

I think the browse verses acorns angle is definitely something to consider. We can easily get hung up on acorns and some years on public, they can be almost non-existent. Summer droughts and late Spring freezes can have a huge impact on acorn production. White oaks produce every year under normal conditions, but red oaks produce every other year. Having said that, sometimes you can locate an oak that may be one of the few that are producing that lean year that can be a hot spot. Food sources can change extremely fast as cold weather and frosts hit and animals are vacuuming up the groceries. Some scouting cameras can show bucks using an area heavily all summer and as soon as their velvet comes off, they can disappear off the cameras, so summer scouting and monitoring may not apply much to what they are doing during hunting season.

[@SufferingOutdoors]

Thanks for watching. If you get on a pocket of acorns without much other food, it can be really hot. I think the challenge is finding it and how it changes so much from year to year. That is one of the reasons why clear cuts have become so popular because of the consistent food source that holds deer. I also think you can see that late summer shift mostly from areas where food sources change especially as it relates to agg. I don’t know if there is as much of a shift in the big woods and have seen evidence of that from PSU’s deer forest study of collared bucks. Most bucks stay within their home range from summer to fall. They tend to find areas that has everything they need from one season to the next.