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How to Locate a Big Buck Using Aerial Photos

To the deer hunter, aerial photographs are an excellent resource for bettering the chances of finding a large buck. What may seem like a generic top-down view of a stretch of country is actually full of information -- so much so that everyone from soil scientists and geologists to hydrologists and urban planners rely on such photos for diverse analyses. For hunters, the aerial photograph does not necessarily replace on-the-ground scouting, but it can fine-tune that reconnaissance by providing an overview of pertinent landscape features.

Things You'll Need

Aerial photograph

Instructions

- 1
  
  Isolated belts of timber may shelter and funnel deer.
  
  Look for travel corridors. These are parts of the landscape utilized by deer as routes between, say, bedding and feeding sites. Two examples might be a woodlot piercing two fields or a riparian gallery forest in a grassland. These isolated belts of timber show up clearly in aerial photos. Where topography or vegetation restrict a deer's travel in this way, hunters often call the corridors "funnels" and concentrate their efforts here.
- 2
  Look for ridgelines and river valleys that offer larger scale travel corridors, in places where deer migrate. Mule deer in the western US often move up and down slopes throughout the year, for example, and seek out direct, less severe passages.
- 3
  
  Whitetail bucks often favor areas of dense timber or tangled thickets as bedding sites.
  
  Identify bedding areas and other shelter. Whitetail bucks often hole up in dense stands of timber. A careful analysis of aerial photos can often discern these deep woods by looking at the density of trees and their composition. Conifer groves are likely buck bedding sites; these may show up as a darker patch of forest.
- 4
  
  Darker shades and more uniform crowns often distinguish conifer groves from hardwood forests.
  
  Identify conifer patches also by looking at the shape and composition of tree-crowns. You might zero in on a black-spruce bog within a hardwood forest by noticing the more uniform crowns of the conifers as opposed to those of the deciduous trees. A white-cedar swamp might show up as a collection of round-based, dark trees.
- 5
  Seek out likely feeding areas. In a mosaic of agricultural and wooded country, you could identify cropfields sure to attract white-tailed deer -- especially those situated near groves, thickets and other zones of shelter.
- 6
  
  From above, an old oak will cast a shadow defined by a thick trunk and heavy, twisting branches.
  
  Look for oak and other mast trees that draw in deer during the autumn nut crop; note that their fallen leaves also provide a food source. One method of identifying tree species from an aerial photograph is to look for the shadows they cast with oblique sunlight. An oak's shadow might show heavy, twisted branches and a stout trunk.
- 7
  Use the aerial photograph to find more remote, secluded areas. Especially during hunting season, big, veteran bucks may be steering clear of roadways. The schematic revealed in the photograph -- the network of towns, roads, woods, wetlands and other landscape features -- can reveal the wildest corners of a given tract of land.

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