Glassing Strategies

[BML]

Will the general hunts getting ready to start, I thought I would bring this up again to refresh everyone.

 

What are your strategies for glassing? Specifically, what directional slopes are you looking at in the morning, afternoon and evening? Do you completely change areas from morning to evening or are you simply changing where you look?

 

 

Other than the obvious, "glass until your eyes feel like they are going to pop out and then glass some more", what do you do??

[KB-AZ]

In the morning I like glassing south facing slopes, then I move to north and NW facing slopes.

[atforest]

Great topic, thanks for bringing it up!!

 

I just read a book written by Jim Heffelfinger and in the book he noted that Coues prefer north-facing slopes. This is my first year Coues hunting so I was going to start by glassing the north-facing slopes both morning and evening.

[Kaffer62]

Keep the sun at your back or to your side.... Glass open hillsides morning... thick oak in the afternoon. Using the grid pattern from the left to right drop down a little and do it again.... once you have glassed everything, Glass it again. Take your time picking apart every bit of the mountain.... Deer can be anywhere.

[SunDevil]

DO NOT undervalue glassing shaded areas in the morning or the evening. it is very tough to glass those shaded areas when the sun is low on the horizon but you will find more bucks in the shade than you will in the sun.

 

when it is windy, if you can find a shaded, wind protected hill to glass - even better.

 

try to identify traffic corridors and check them frequently.

 

if you are using high power binocs (15X or greater) DO NOT forget to look in close. your field of view is limited but if you are being quiet, there might be a buck within a couple hundred yards that you are not seeing because you are glassing at 400+ yards out.

[azpackhorse]

"if you are using high power binocs (15X or greater) DO NOT forget to look in close. your field of view is limited but if you are being quiet, there might be a buck within a couple hundred yards that you are not seeing because you are glassing at 400+ yards out. "

 

 

This is probably one of the worst habits I have, I automatically start looking far away with the big glass. I am retraining myself to also look close with the 15's.

 

All very good advice.

[silenthunter686]

If I just top out on a ridge I like to observe the land scape. look for movement. Glassing close with my 10x binos. Can't tell you how many times that i have been busted even though I move slowly into my glassing spot. trying not to silhoutte the ridge with a bush or rocks at my back. this could be 10 -15 min. or even longer. Then I get my 15x out. Still looking at as many close saddles as possable. mornings I will glass south facing slopes and escape routes. If i'm glassing a large mountain I will glass it in quarters panning. Afternoons I will glass heavy veg. (north facing slopes ect) do that all over again. I always have my 10x at my side. It is sometimes hard to put a deer in my 15s on a tripod at close range. Good luck to ALL!!!!! Oct 24th Unit#33

[COUESAZ]

I must be the backwards guy. I have very good luck with setting out in the flats/lower hills and glassing the north facing slopes in the morning and evenings. The sun can get to you a little this way so i drape my extra sweet shirt over my head and cover the side of my face to block the sun. I think deer are smart enough to use the sun in there advantage. because no matter what when you start seeing them moving wammo there comes the sun in your side veiw. The sun is always to my back or side.

 

Then again if i was one of those Payson boys my tascos could see right through those sun rays.

[JLG]

I think the advice for looking close is valid. I have a set of 15 x 56's and even before those I had a tendency to look way the heck out there and I still do to be honest with you.

Since, I bought my 15's I have forced myself to look under the trees and bushes in the 400 yards and less range. I think as big bad hunters we think we can see anything in the 400 yards and less range with our eyes, but it's not so. It really takes me great discipline to look under each bush and tree. It can payoff pretty well. I was tired of not seeing anything last weekend on a cow elk hunt I had in a LO unit. I told myself I was going to just pop over this little ridge and glass every bush and tree in the ravine I was sitting over, probably 150 to 300 yards tops. We had not seen anything all day and our spirits were sagging abit. At about 200 yards I glassed up a 3 x 3 mulie, bedded under a tree in the shade. Honestly, the first thing I saw was his hind quarters and his "male stuff", with 15's at that distance he looked "blessed". My point in this is if I had continued to be stubborn and keep looking off at 3/4 to a mile off, I would have missed this guy.

I am looking forward to picking a part these moderate ranges on my 36C WT in late Nov. I got a little hill that has some very thick country that is at best 300 yards out. The plan is to make the hill before first light and just be patient and pick that area apart. It holds alot of deer, you just have to believe they are there and take your time.

So anyway, look close, and if you know it holds deer get there before the sun comes up as well, Take Care, JLG.

[BowNut]

I try to start glassing close then work my way out to further distances. I find a spot that I can glass as close to 360 degrees around me with as little movement as possible but still have cover behind me and shade to sit in. Then I pick apart every nook,cranny and tree. I like to look "small" As if I was looking for a shed or even a chipmunk. I have noticed that if you are looking small that big bedded deer just seems to jump out at you. I almost forgot I ALWAYS have something orange in the tree I'm under or on the rocks after having a spike run up behind me and my son (less then 20 yards) a few years ago someone started shooting at it!!

 

Be safe and Good Luck this year guys.

[SunDevil]

it is almost like you have to train your eyes to look for a tail or an ear or an antler or the white inside of a leg. most of the deer might be behind a bush and all you will see is part of it. they are not called grey ghosts for nothing. you could glass a hill 10 times and not see anything and then all of a sudden, out of nowhere your buddy glasses up a buck and you are like I have glassed that hill 10 times and havent seen anything. they can just as easily disappear into thin air.

[JMP]

this is henry david thoreau's advise. i think most people on here got this part covered

 

We cannot see anything until we are possessed with the idea of it, and then we can hardly see anything else. In my botanical rambles I find that first the idea, or image, of a plan occupies my thoughts, though it may at first seem very foreign to this locality, and for some weeks or months I go thinking of it and expecting it unconsciously, and at length I surely see it, and it is henceforth an actual neighbor of mine.

[IHunt2live]

When I'm hunting with my wife, she doesn't like to look through glass all that much. So she keeps an eye open up close and for any kind of movement. She has spotted a few bucks that way when I've got my eyes in my glasses looking to far out.

Just an idea, keep a guy looking up close and movement with the nacked eye.

[SunDevil]

a very accomplished coues deer hunter told me a few years ago - the best advice he had to give to anyone that ever asked was to try and think like a deer.

[peckl1]

Do not forget to look hard into those ocotillo groves on any hillside! They seem to hold a lot of deer.

 

Lee