Now's the time to scout for the coming year

Across much of our great nation, turkey hunters are burrowing down this spring into thickets, sitting with backs to a tree, camouflaged from head to toe in order to bag a bearded bird. Enough South Texas gobblers, however, are harvested almost as an afterthought by deer hunters with deer rifles on wide senderos that the springtime turkey hunting season rarely finds South Texas hunters following the example of hunters to the north.

Reality in the South Texas Plains forces most hunters, regardless of quarry, into these "senderos" or wide, straight and long paths bulldozed through the brush with behemoth dozers, or into rare patches of open chaparral. The thick tangles of thorns are often left entirely unexplored, and if hunters bear down and follow the seemingly impenetrable deer trails, a wealth of information awaits.

Even though one may hunt on an open sendero, scouting the entire hunting spread is vital. The more successful, methodical hunters scout the thick brush edging senderos and fence lines throughout the year, and the time to conduct postseason scouting is ripe in March.

White-tailed deer hunters need to be looking primarily for two things: scrapes and rubs. Of the two, rubs are most visible to the moderately trained eye. These consist of small saplings of plants like mesquite, huisache and prairie acacia that have been rubbed at their bases by whitetail bucks as they seek to harden and polish antlers before the rut. In South Texas, fresh rubs are made beginning in October and are plentiful in mid-to-late November. Of particular noteworthiness are rubs made on bigger trees, three inches in diameter and up. These are left by bucks with larger antlers.

Scrapes are harder to find unless one knows what to look for. A scrape is a shallow, saucer-shaped hole pawed out in usually soft, silty soil by bucks five feet below overhanging branches. A dead giveaway for a scrape is in the overhanging branches, where the tips are usually chewed and bitten and broken off. Every buck that comes into an area with a scrape will visit the spot to urinate and mark his scent by chewing the overhanging branches. These are excellent spots to stake out during the rut in mid-December, but the dedicated whitetail scout can find them now. Scrapes strike me as odd because, while they are used like a pack of dogs uses a fire hydrant during the rut, they never seem to go completely cold and are used intermittently throughout the year.

Dedicate half a day to scout on the property you hunt sometime in the coming week if you have not already done so. Late March is perfect because the mesquite, granjeno and blackbrush have not gotten their leaves back, so poking around in the bedrooms of whitetails pays off hugely with evidence. Take a GPS and a digital camera and mark the coordinates of scrapes and rubs. Note the direction of deer trails and where they terminate into the open, and note bedding where lots of deer droppings can be found.

Although buck deer in South Texas have not shed their antlers quite yet, they will have by late April. Shed hunting will be phase two of the scouting done up to November, and I will have more on shed hunting in April.

Hazards when scouting include coming face-to-face with rattlesnakes in some of the thickest brush, and with bad timing, like when one is on hands-and-knees. I advise Kevlar snake chaps and a .410 shotgun when scouting. Another hazard is ticks. Without a good killing freeze, ticks are the worst they have been in a long time. Wear a quality bug repellent. I wear protection against thorns, like heavy cotton jacket and good blue jeans with the aforementioned chaps. Work gloves would not be a bad idea, though I don't use them. It's important not to get overheated.

Do not get lost or dehydrated. Take a small, low profile backpack with a quart or two of water, with your GPS in it. A machete is not a bad idea, but crucito thorns, granjeno, catclaw and others grow in such tangles that it's best to stomp over such brambles, tear through them, or go under in tunnels feral hogs and javelinas have carved out, and that whitetails use.

Armed with knowledge, next season's successful whitetail hunter is already working towards picking out a single buck for next season before the fishing turns on and the waters lure us away from the brush and that task seems terribly distant.