Spring Deer Scouting Reveals the Best Fall Stand Sites

Spring deer scouting, before vegetation fills in, reveals hidden cover, overlooked deer travel routes, and better fall stand sites.

Spring deer scouting is one of the best ways to find killer spots to hang stands for fall. With the woods as barren as they’ll be all year, it’s easier to spot the trails and hidden cover deer rely on when they need security most.

The good news is these places are super simple to find in spring. With vegetation knocked back, well-worn trails stick out like a sore thumb. Follow those trails and they’ll often lead you to some kind of cover. Once you find it, mark a couple of trees that seem like ideal stand sites.

Don’t be surprised if you find early spring trails leading you to spots where you probably would never think to look: fencerows, thick patches close to houses, clusters of new-fallen timber.

Deer seeking cover don’t care about your preconceived notions about where they should hang out.

a hunter looking at a heavy deer trail while spring deer scouting — *Deer trails that can be hard to see in summer and fall stand out before spring green-up.*

Follow the sign. Then, it’s up to you to determine if a deer hangout is suitable to hunt. Maybe it’s not. But maybe you can identify an area nearby that deer move through to get to that patch of cover. Maybe that’s where you choose a stand site.

A Spring Deer Scouting Success Story

One late March day several years back, I was doing some spring deer scouting on one of the properties where I have permission to hunt, and I jumped a group of deer in a greenbrier thicket.

The thicket wasn’t close to any food source. It wasn’t part of any natural funnel or other topographical feature that funnels deer to a certain area. It was just a small thicket in the middle of the woods.

I crawled into the thicket and it reeked of deer. Droppings and depressions in the dead vegetation indicated beds were everywhere.

a hunter with a large whitetail buck he took after selecting a stand he found while spring deer scouting — *The author has had great success finding his favorite deer stands during spring scouting trips.*

I marked the thicket on my GPS and returned in September. At that time of year, with the woods in full vegetation, the thicket was kind of hard to pick out. But my GPS coordinates led me right to it, and I set up a stand in a tree I had marked the previous March.

That stand overlooked a trail that looked like a highway in the spring, but now was mostly covered by grass and ferns. Had I been visiting this spot for the first time, I would have walked right by it. But I knew what was hidden underneath.

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One morning in November, I was in my stand next to this thicket when a doe came sprinting through the woods.

She ducked into the far side of the thicket from me and vanished just before I spied a 10-pointer trailing behind her by about 60 yards. He went into the thicket, too, just about the time the doe popped out on the trail beneath my stand.

a well-used whitetail bedding site — *A great example of a heavily used bedding site the author found while scouting for whitetails in the spring.*

That’s all I needed to see, so I drew my bow and waited. Seconds later, the buck walked out on the same trail and I arrowed it at 5 yards. Thank you, spring scouting.

Not Every Thick Spot Holds Deer

There are lots of places deer can be when the woods are green and lush. As the green disappears and the forest floor opens up, the resident deer migrate to those places where the cover remains and where they feel secure.

When an area is thick all year, there’s a solid chance it holds deer all year, too. And if it’s an area that deer frequent all year, you know the bucks are going to swing by come the fall as they search for hot does.

But just because an area is thick doesn’t mean it holds deer. Studies have shown whitetails can have a home range of up to 900 acres, but they’re going to spend the vast majority of time in an area as small as 50 acres.

That’s why you use spring deer scouting to let the deer tell you the location of that core area.

Spring Deer Scouting Offers Low Risk, High Reward

The best thing about spring deer scouting is it makes absolutely no difference if you bump deer from a particular spot. First, you’ll presumably only be disturbing them once.

And second, if the area makes them feel safe this time of year, they’ll be back. There’s a reason they were in there in the first place.

If you have doubts about how frequent deer are using a particular area, set up a couple of trail cameras and monitor the site for activity. Deer will spread out over their home range once fall comes and there’s more security cover available.

a white-tailed deer track in soft mud — *Trails, and even individual tracks, are easy to identify in spring when the ground is soft and the leaves are sparse.*

What you’re looking for in spring are those places where they go when there is nowhere else to go.

So if the property you hunt sees a lot of pressure, the local deer’s late-winter/early spring hideouts often are the places they head to when they get pushed.

Bowhunter activity is going to be highest when the rut kicks in, and during that time, I want to know where deer go to feel the safest. And spring is the time to find those places.