How to Pick a Hunting Spot in a New Area

At some point in your hunting pursuits, you’ve probably utilized an aerial mapping tool of some sort. From printed out photos to very hunter-specific tools like OnX Maps, there are tons of resources available to today’s hunters. These mapping tools provide a lot of the information you need to make educated guesses about the quality of hunting spots you’ve never set your boots on.

There is an undeniable value in hunting tried-and-true areas that you have spend years observing and getting to know. Many nuances in how animals use an area can’t be seen from your phone or laptop. However, when you’re trying to hunt an area you’ve never been to before, e-scouting sure can come in handy. I would also make the argument that looking at an aerial/terrain imagery map of places you’ve been to many times can provide you with new information about surrounding features as well as insight as to why animals might move through your familiar piece of hunting ground.

              E-scouting is extremely useful to hunters who are traveling to a new area to hunt. You can spend time months in advance perusing maps and picking out likely “good spots” to check out later on when you physically arrive on location.

In my adult life, I have moved around a lot to different states and certainly the advancements in e-scouting technology have made a huge difference in providing me with information about hunting opportunities that would have been hard to come by before. I’ll be changing my state of residence once again this coming fall and already have been looking at maps for potential hunting spots, something that was more difficult just ten years ago. In this article, I will outline the strategy I have developed in locating new hunting spots when I have spent little to no time physically on site.

The author arrowed this doe when hunting an e-scouted spot for the first time.

1. Start big! I zoom out to a large scale of the area I’m interested in. If it’s a hunt unit, I want to be able to see an image that incorporates the whole area. You can get a general feel for major land features like agricultural zones, forested areas, river bottoms or lakes. Turn on the topo layer for an even better idea of terrain severity—ridges, mountains, flat areas. Turn on the layer for public land, and you can see the proximity of public tracts to one another, as well as their sizes at a larger scale. It helps to get some overall perspective before diving into finer scale details.Zoomed out, larger scale image of an area with a lot of public land in close proximity to a city. 
2. Depending on your target species, there are different attributes of a piece of property that you will want to look for. I start looking at available public properties with more attention to detail at this stage. Some of my favorite things to look for are large pieces of property with more terrain variability that offers the potential to get away from people and hunt terrain features like saddles or ridges. I also have had success when scouting for wetlands on the aerial map. One other useful tip is to look for old homesteads within big woods. These former homesteads that have been uninhabited for years often have great habitat, with thick cover and occasionally fruit trees that provide food for wildlife.
3. On a finer scale, you can seek out certain types of crops or field edges on aerial imagery. It is important to not only pay attention to the property you can hunt, but also the surrounding areas. This will provide some insight as to how animals may be using the landscape. Don’t overlook tiny pieces of public property—they could be a bedding area or travel corridor between larger food sources on surrounding private land.
4. Now the fun part—boots on the ground! Once you have some spots in mind that you have e-scouted in proximity to your target hunting area, it’s time to check them out in person. See which crops are truly in the fields and how they’re doing. Is the corn standing or cut? Is that wetland actually wet or has it dried out over the summer? Is the parking area of the dynamite spot I found on OnX stacked with hunting rigs?

Having just a short amount of time for an out of state hunt is one thing, but if you’re trying to learn some new honey holes for yourself in an area you can hunt often, spending as much time learning these places in person will pay dividends for seasons to come. Remember, while aerial mapping tools may be great for you, they’re also great for everyone else. A backup plan or two (or ten) never hurt anything. Hunting new spots is one of the most fun and challenging outdoor adventures you can have, get out of your comfort zone and good luck!

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