Scouting a new area

[MrFox]

I am looking at 2 places in general (depending on wind, and human traffic). I had scouted both and saw some deer signs at both.

1) 45°8.020'N 87°6.348'W (I plan to scout along the spring there, it has high grass and swamped). I saw a deer bed there.

2) 45° 14.253'N 87° 1.500'W
I believe that the second one is most likely to be heavily hunted (I saw a permanent stand on the edge of swamp opening as well as a coke can, and there were other cars when I did scouting), but then again its more forested and less open land, so hopefully not many hunters will go deep inside. I saw a scrape down there, and also some deer scat. My plan is to scout that area between the ATV trail going south and the swamp opening, but to stay somewhere in the middle between them.

I'd love to hear if I should focus on one of those areas and why.

[timberghost]

There's a post in this forum (Lodge) which has area maps of hunting grounds and all that if you want to check it out it is:

links to hunting area maps??

Sorry to highjack this post but I figured I'd throw it out there.

[BigBuckDown]

I hunt a lot of public land in Illinois and what I do before every trip to one particular state park is drive around the park and check out all of the parking lots. One in particular always have 5 or more trucks in it, so I avoid it. Most of the guys are gone by noon but back around 3. I found a little spot that most people avoid because it is pretty small, maybe 40 acres, but noone goes there usually so I have the place to myself. I've seen 10 or so deer in this area with two nice bucks. Everyones oversight is my gain, and I only "found" this spot last season. I guess my point is don't overlook an area because others do. This spot has a river on one boundry, a high wall where rail road tracks go over on another side, and a private pasture/horse farm on the other and in the middle of it all is a highly used bedding thicket. Great stuff to watch them move in and out of the bedding area.

[Inderveanyday]

What's up everyone, I'm new to the forum and just wanted to say hey. Hopefully I posted this in the right section!