It’s never too soon to start thinking about your next hunting season. You may spot deer on your trail cameras during certain seasons, but old-fashioned legwork may yield better results when searching for fresh deer tracks this summer. Tony Peterson of Outdoor News says it may be a slow time for spotting deer, but summer scouting can lend to fall hunting success when you know how to read deer tracks.

“I don’t spend any time sitting behind a spotting scope looking for feeding bachelor groups in the evenings. Instead, I walk field edges, logging roads, and the shores of rivers and ponds looking for tracks. Since I’m not much of a “hit list” type of hunter, I instead opt to set my standards to a certain age or class of buck. This allows me the opportunity to scour soil and sand for deer tracks of a certain size. This tells me with fair certainty that a buck I’d be happy to tag has walked through an area.”

Photo by: University of Kentucky