With experience, you’ll learn to recognize habitat “signatures” on aerial photos. As an initial scouting step, I have labeled all vegetation signatures on this aerial photo, as well as inside corners and other significant vegetation features.
If you don’t know how to read a topo map, buy a map for a familiar area and simply walk the ground, relating your location to terrain features on the map. If your area receives any snowfall, wait three to four days after a snow, and then follow deer tracks and trails in the snow while relating them to your map. You will quickly learn how deer respond to positive and negative terrain.
Now you can apply this knowledge to other areas you’re interested in hunting -- without actually going there. A deer is a deer is a deer, and they all relate to terrain in much the same way, regardless of geographic location.
One caution: Many topo maps are outdated in regard to vegetation (white areas are open, green are timbered). While the terrain won’t vary, what appears to be a field on your map could now be a thicket -- or subdivision.
Aerial Photographs
Aerials, too, can be outdated, so make sure you get the latest versions. A few years ago I helped a friend analyze aerial photos for an area where he’d drawn a special tag, but I made one mistake -- I failed to ask how old his aerials were. Upon arrival, my friend discovered that all three high-odds spots we’d picked had been clearcut five years earlier!
To avoid a repeat of that, I always search the Internet for the most recent photos. My search parameters are “state name + DOQQ.” DOQQ stands for Digital Orthophoto Quarter Quadrangle, which is an aerial photo that’s been corrected for image displacement due to terrain and camera tilt. This should reveal the most recent photos for the area, and from there it’s a simple download. Other excellent resources include Google Earth, Mapcard, and other mapping software.
In some places I’ve lived, such as coastal Georgia, where the terrain is flat, topos are almost worthless. In such areas, I scout almost exclusively with photos. However, in hilly terrain, photos leave something to be desired. But put the two together, and you have the best of both worlds. With both, picking a few good ambush spots should be no problem.
For example, this past season my dad, uncle, and cousin were visiting during the rut. Before they arrived, I used maps and aerial photos to pinpoint numerous stand sites on a wildlife management area. The first evening, I spread the four of us over a two-mile area in high-odds spots. My cousin Mike was sitting in a strip of woods 150 yards wide, a travel corridor I first identified on an aerial photo. However, the photo showed no obvious pinch points. So I studied a topo map and discovered a steep draw cutting uphill through the middle of the corridor, pinching the 150 yards down to about 20. Perfect. Within 10 minutes of his climbing into his stand at this point, Mike was looking down his arrow at a giant buck, nose down, trailing a doe down the funnel. Later that evening we recovered Mike’s buck, a massive nontypical measuring more than 170 inches!
North American Whitetall
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