Looking for new hunting spots for whitetails on pressured public land? The best time to scout is once the season has opened, because that’s when other hunters show up, and only then can you figure out how to get away from them.
Food, water, bedding, security cover, travel routes—there’s no question these are important places to find whenever you enter the whitetail’s world. But all of these are likely to change if people show up in the middle of them. Do you really think a mature buck is going to return to the same bedding spot day after day if it’s surrounded by human scent and noise? Deer mature by avoiding hunters. And so when hunting season is on, I want to go where other hunters don’t.
What This Article Covers:
- How hunting pressure changes where deer spend their time
- Why access, parking and other hunters can help reveal overlooked spots
- How timing your entry and using hunter movement can put deer in front of you
Hunt the Hunters, Not Just the Deer
But finding places to hunt where others aren’t hunting isn’t as simple as it sounds. The search is often never ending. You can find a secluded spot for yourself, and then another hunter might move in. And so you have to abandon that spot and go find another.
We hunters can be creatures of habit ourselves. It’s not easy giving up a hot deer hunting spot that you worked hard to find—especially if it’s one where you’ve had success. The tendency is to feel ownership of that spot and develop the mindset, “I was here first. This is my spot.”
When it comes to hunting whitetails on public land, that’s a losing proposition. Everyone has as much right to any spot as everyone else. And the deer don’t care about who’s there. Once they feel pressure, they’ll move out. And now your hotspot isn’t so hot anymore.
It’s possible another hunter who moves into “your” spot is as careful about noise, scent and direction of approach as you. In that case, you don’t necessarily have to move. But what if he isn’t? You could be wasting your time at that spot. I’m not taking that chance.
I’m a lifelong Pennsylvania deer hunter. Pennsylvania has one of the highest concentrations of deer hunters in the country. It’s not always easy to get away from other hunters on public land in the Keystone State, but when I commit to doing just that, I find ways to be successful in places where others aren’t.
When a Secret Spot Stops Being Secret
There’s a tract of public land near my house that I’ve hunted for decades. After hunting there a few years, I got a general sense of the patterns hunters followed in terms of where they parked, where they hunted and how they got from one to the other.
Guided by that information, I located a super-thick section of creek bottom where nobody hunted. It was choked with multiflora rose and greenbriers, and the most direct route in took you right through the cover where the deer liked to hide. I’m sure that’s why nobody hunted there, but I had a hunch it was a honey hole. A quick scouting mission one October morning convinced me this spot was loaded with deer. It also convinced me I had to find a unique way into it without spooking the deer.
Private property on two sides, and a highway on the third, limited my options, but I finally discovered if I walked in the stream for about 300 yards, I could get to one particular tree 10 yards from the water without alerting the deer. On a chilly November morning that year, I tagged a nice 10-point buck from that tree.
Success! I beat the crowds and found my secret honey hole. This was my new favorite spot.
The next year, I went to hunt “my” tree and spotted a ladder stand 10 yards from it. I hunted that morning and saw nothing, and walked back to my truck totally dejected. At the parking lot, I met another hunter who recognized me. He told me he had seen me hauling the 10-pointer out on my deer cart the year before and followed my tracks back to my stand location, and set up his own.
“I figured you must have found a good spot!” he told me with enthusiasm.
That’s the last time I hunted from that tree. I moved on. I knew this hunter would take the direct route in to that spot, which meant he’d blow out every deer on the way, pushing them to find new security cover. Continuing to hunt there would only have been a waste of my time.
How Deer Respond to Hunting Pressure
Beginning in 2013, Penn State researchers conducted a long-term study in which dozens of deer on Pennsylvania public lands were fitted with GPS tracking collars. Biologists logged the movements of those deer over time, or until they died. Duane Diefenbach, an adjunct professor of wildlife ecology and longtime leader of the Pennsylvania Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, was one of the principal biologists involved in the study.
He said the tracking data showed deer didn’t leave the state when hunters showed up, but they sure learned how to avoid them.
“Deer rarely leave their home range,” Diefenbach said. “The ones who have survived a deer season have some place in their home range that they learned they are unlikely to be disturbed, and that’s where they go.”
On the property I hunt near my home, that safe place was the thicket where I tagged that 10-pointer. The resident deer learned to head there once hunting season started.
“I think they learn that after their first hunting season,” Diefenbach said about how quickly deer find those safe places where hunters don’t go.
Look for Places Hunters Avoid
Figuring out where those places are on the property you’re hunting isn’t difficult. But it can take time. Just because a spot is thick doesn’t mean someone’s not hunting there. If you know the topography and foliage of the property you’re hunting, start scouting and hunting in those places where you think hunters won’t be. Steep slopes, tangled thickets, swamps. If it seems like a place that wouldn’t be easy or fun to hunt, put it on the list of places to check out.
When you do check it out, look for stands, scrapes on trees from climbers, ribbons, reflective night tacks, obvious signs of trail cutting—anything that might lead you to believe other hunters are already hunting there. If you find such evidence, move on.
There was a doe fitted with a collar as part of the Penn State study that the researchers nicknamed “Hillside Doe.” They called her that because when hunters were around, this doe headed to one of the steepest, rockiest slopes in her public-land home range, but one that was within easy walking distance of the road all the hunters drove on to get to the tract where she lived.
Tracking data showed that once hunters started showing up in her woods, this doe would regularly head from wherever she was feeding during the night to her hillside safety spot well before daylight, and then stay there almost until dark. Clearly, hunters weren’t pushing her off that slope.
In a related, but separate Penn State study, biologists tracked hunter movements during deer season by giving some of them GPS devices to carry. One glaring bit of information they found quickly is that many hunters don’t venture far from roads, and so a good way to find deer instead of hunters can be to hoof it.
“If access is limiting, via few roads or steep terrain, most hunters are staying within a quarter-mile of the road,” Diefenbach said. “So you should go farther than a quarter-mile.”
Start Your Scouting in the Parking Lot
Something I always look for is parking. Where are hunters going to park? More importantly, where are they likely to not park? A dedicated parking lot is going to attract a lot more hunters than a spot along the road that’s just big enough for your truck. And that single spot gets even more appealing to me the farther away it is from dedicated parking. If you’re just a couple hundred yards down the road, you’re essentially parking in the lot.
There’s another public land where I hunt near home that’s basically a hilltop surrounded by roads. One side of the hill has a couple of parking lots, but the other side has none. I found a spot along the road on that side of the hill where I could just barely get my truck onto the shoulder safely, and I started parking there.
That parking strategy served me well in two ways. First, it allowed me to find pockets of deer habitat that other hunters weren’t reaching from the parking lots. And second, it put me in a place where deer were getting pushed by hunters who parked in the lot and then walked into the woods, heading in my direction. This has worked especially well on Saturdays when more hunters than normal are out.
Get There Before Everyone Else
As part of my strategy hunting this location, I always made sure I headed in early enough so that I was settled in my stand no less than one hour before daylight. I can’t tell you how many mornings I sat and listened to deer moving below me in the dark, and they had no idea I was there.
That’s typically something I try to do any time I’m hunting pressured property. I want to be the first one in the woods, whether that means heading in two or three hours before daylight for a morning hunt—depending on how far I have to walk—or heading in just after lunchtime for an evening sit. I want to be sitting when other hunters are moving. You never know what might get pushed to you.
Let Other Hunters Move Deer to You
In 2023, I headed out to a local park with my bow on the last day of Pennsylvania’s two-week gun season, with the intention of sitting the afternoon until dark. My cameras showed some fairly regular doe movement just before quitting time in one spot that I liked to hunt, and I figured a doe for the freezer would be a nice addition.
As I usually do, I took a circuitous route around the area where I suspected deer might be hiding and set up in a section of woods near a field that was opposite the direction where I knew most hunters liked to enter the property. I went in at noon, when I figured most hunters were having lunch. I was all set up by 1 p.m., and at 1:30, some movement about 300 yards out in the trees caught my eye.
The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but that straight line isn’t always the best path to a good hunting spot.
I grabbed my binoculars and spotted a shooter buck trotting my way. He wasn’t running, but he was clearly moving away from something with a purpose. By the time I stowed my binoculars and picked up my bow, the buck was approaching my only shooting lane 40 yards out. I drew back the string and yelled when the buck was in the clear. A perfect arrow through the heart dropped the solid 10-pointer before he left my sight.
I’m convinced I got that buck because I took a long route around the area where I thought the deer were, and I was positioned on the opposite side of that area from the parking lot. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but that straight line isn’t always the best path to a good hunting spot on high-pressure public lands. Don’t be afraid to take the long way in to a spot if it gets you away from other hunters and puts you in position to take advantage of their movements.
Hunt When the Crowds Stay Home
The last trick I employ to avoid other hunters is I hunt when they don’t. Again, this can take some time in the woods to figure out when the least number of hunters are out on the tract you want to hunt, but I’ve found Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings are always good bets. Also, any day or time during the week when it’s raining is a solid choice to beat the crowds.
The 2025-26 season marked the first broad expansion of Sunday hunting in Pennsylvania after the state repealed its longstanding general prohibition. Where I live and do most of my hunting is about an hour west of Philadelphia, so I’m in prime Philadelphia Eagles fan-base territory. I only have one season’s worth of data, but Sunday afternoons when the Eagles had a game seemed to be pretty good for finding elbow room in the woods.
Finding places and times that allow me to stay away from other hunters is my number one hunting strategy for Pennsylvania public lands. Once I find solitude, then I look for deer. On high-pressure public lands, I believe it’s the best path to success. Be creative and don’t be stubborn. Remember, we all have the right to be out there, and there will always be places where deer go when the pressure is on.
