where to start?

going down to a new property in a few weeks in rushford, mn. My step father knows a lady that has 500 acres that has never been hunted and she said deer are roaming the property and ruining her farm. That being were should i place stands? I will be talking to her to figure out where she sees the most deer since she farms it but what should i look for? I was thinking game trails but what esle? I will be bowhunting it mostly and maybe rifle to but more looking at this property for bow hunting. Any help would be helpful.

Derrick

That is a hard one with out seeing the property, but generally the first thing I would do is get a Topo or Ariel map of the farm and adjacent farms. Look for pinch points and funnels where the cover gets thin or pinches down. Another good place to start is inside corners of field edges where the crops and woods meet.

The best thing to do is when you visit the farm to scout, in the evening get set up where you can view the most area of the farm and wait with a good spotting scope and or binocs. As the sun goes down start scanning all areas. Once you locate where deer are, fine tune your search and next time figure out exactly where they are coming out. This should give you a good game plan for evening sits. Also once you know where they are coming out see if there is a way to sneak in 100 yards or so off the field edge in the woods and this could be a good morning spot. Once your season is over with, get in and work the whole place over and know where the bedding spots are. These bedding spots do/can change with season and wind direction. The best thing after studying the topo is spending time down there at dawn or dusk and get to know their movements and yes the Farmer themselves can usually tell you where they see the deer on their farms.

But basically, I think by looking at a topo or ariel map this might be your best tool and answer a lot of questions or at least give you a good start with out even stepping foot on the property. Keeping in mind the wind directions and how the property sits, thinking of access to and from certain stands with certain winds.

I agree with Lip on pretty much everything he said! It’s too bad you couldn’t have scouted it this past spring before all the leaves came brush came out. It would’ve been easy to identify trails, old scrapes, rub lines and bedding areas.

Congrats on your new piece of hunting land…wish I had your problem! (Hunting on 500 acres of virgin land )

I also agree with Lip- walk the field edge and look for trails, when u find one look at the tracks on them. Typicaly with big tracks and no little ones there’s a good chance it’s a buck. Also, its not too late to put mineral out with a camera on it.