One of the Best Times to Do Post-Season Scouting

Jay show the snowing
how the snow was.

Or would it be considered pre-season scouting already? Actually, that doesn't matter and is not even the point of this point. Today was forecasted to be a mild day, with light to no percipitation and temps reaching near 40 degrees. For this time of year in north central West Virginia, today was a day that you take advantage of, so Jay and I did just that. After having my trail cam near froze out of the woods the last time I had it out, we decided it was time to try it again. Neither of us knew, if we were going to be able to access the road to our property, but worst case scenario we thought we'd be able to make it inside the gate and walk in.

Random turkey tracks leading
 towards my food plot.

Well, of course, our worst case scenario happened to be true, and a little worse. The road had to be cleared out by a grader early in the week, and due to the fact that the road to our property isn't a driveway or a road leading to a home, it was blocked it. This lead us to do the only logical thing, we parked at the top of the mountain, and found the old log road that  I used as a youngin' to enter to property. It wasn't a bad walk, not much more than a half mile in, but wading snow ranging in depth from your shins to your knees, never makes for a fun or easy walk. But we will do almost anything for deer, that was actually our discussion on the walk in, how ridiculous we are at times about hunting and fishing, but then we wised up and realized we were really talking crazy then. After walking in we both agreed that it was a good thing we didn't brave it in a vehicle; for one, there would have been now way to have gotten back out even if we did make it in and two, we would have missed quite a few tracks and even a rub that we hadn't saw before. I only took a few pictures of the tracks, but we saw deer tracks, as well as turkey, coyote, fox and some form of a cat track.

I believe this a set of front paw prints of a coyote.

Another discussion topic today was one of how much more you learn when you scout during the winter with snow on the ground. I'll save the hour long dialog that goes along with topic, not that we disagreed on the topic, but that we both had points and reason why we believe it was better this time of year. I will leave you with a few pictures that represents why we believe this to be true, can you tell me the main trail they are using?

A view of the "highway" from a tree stand.

A ground level view of the "highway".