Last November we were lucky enough to have some good tracking snow on the ground. I was able to pick up a good buck track and follow it around for a couple days. The track lead me into some great doe bedding cover. I marked it on a GPS and went in this August and got a camera and stand hung about 50 yards from the edge of where it starts for this year (per usual I had hoped to get out there in about March but life happens). I've only been in once to check the camera and have some steady doe/skipper action and a spike horn; however, I have seen a couple good foot prints in the mud, just haven't caught him on the camera yet.
The surrounding area is mostly standing timber mix of hardwoods (lot of oaks and loaded with acorns right now) with some softwoods intermixed. A westerly wind would blow my scent towards the bedding area while the easterly wind blows away from the bedding area. I'm thinking afternoon hunts wait on an easterly wind and hope to catch something coming up out of the bed and hitting the acorns on the edges of the bedding area that I'm overlooking. Maybe morning hunts I can get away with a westerly wind if they are up on their feet out and about feeding and I'd be downwind of them coming back to bed. This one feels like a little bit of a crap shoot since there's no way to know for sure where they are going to be when I try to get in there in the dark. How would you guys play it?
I don't think it's getting much pressure during the early season so I'm trying to tread lightly in this spot in the early season and not over hunt it, especially if I think it could be a good rut spot to catch bucks cruising to check all that bedding cover. But I'm getting antsy to get in there and hunt it...