ENJOYING THE OUTDOORS: NOW IS THE BEST TIME TO SCOUT FOR NEXT FALL'S WHITETAIL

With the last vestiges of deer hunting expired for the season, it would seem the appropriate time for the sportsman to go goose hunting, chase after rabbits and quail or maybe turn toward thoughts of the year's earliest fishing.

All that is well and good, but now also may be the best time for the whitetail hunter to fatten his odds. Hunting is out, but the deer specialist can make some moves now that will go far to determine the outcome of the next fall's season.

The most successful deer hunters work at it year-round. While constant effort isn't necessary, at least some off-season legwork does pay major dividends. And there's no better time than now, immediately after the last deer hunting is over.

Virtually all deer hunters scout to pick the place or places they'll hunt, but most do their scouting just before the season opens. That's a less than perfect choice.

As often as not, scouting right about the time hunting begins probably spooks deer out of their regular haunts as much as it provides useful information. On top of that, conditions in early fall are stingy with the deer sign that's revealed.

Postseason scouting, on the other hand, allows hunters to move freely in deer country with no fear of messing up the nest round of hunting. Run a few deer off, and they'll have the rest of the winter, spring and summer to return to their normal business and locations.

Just as important, the woods and thickets of post season winter now bear the heaviest accumulation of deer sign. Without a new crop of greenery and with the last batch of leaves long fallen, deer trails are thoroughly hammered into the ground and much more visible. One doesn't have to be Jeremiah Johnson to see what's been going on out there.

A major interest, especially for those who yearn for a respectable rack atop the head of their next deer, is the locations and concentrations of buck rubs, the marks of antler-shredded bark on small trees and bushes.

No other sign probably tells as much about the bucks hunters seek. Rub lines -- linear series of individual rubs -- reveal buck travel routes. The sides of trees rubbed along these routes can reveal the common direction of travel, the sides rubbed being the direction faced at the time, obviously.

The size of trees rubbed can imply the quality of the deer that made them. Though there are no guarantees, it's often the case that the largest trees rubbed are marked by the largest bucks.

Concentrations of rubs, places where numerous rubs are found in proximity, can reflect the core area of a particular buck, an area in which he spends a good deal of his time.

Some bucks that made the rubs earlier in the year, of course, already have ended up on someone's meat pole. While finding their sign won't help tag those deer, it often seems that good habitat for one buck is likewise good for another. For every buck that's taken, another is likely to occupy the same turf, so it's usually the places that are most important.

A hunter at present can meander right through suspected bedding areas and see exactly where deer spend many of their daylight hours. He wouldn't want to do that right before time to hunt, but it won't hurt to jump deer from bedding areas now. Seeing any deer that are routed from a bedding area is educational, and they'll have months to settle back into their comfort zones.

Identifying specific bedding sites by bumping deer out of them, finding the depressions of the beds themselves or locating high concentrations of droppings will go far toward telling a hunter where he needs to set up to hunt next fall.

Learning the location of daytime bedding areas and the evening feeding areas to which bedded deer will be traveling and the routes they use is about all the hunter can require. After determining a travel route, the only other thing needed is to pick out specific sites to set up autumn ambushes.

The foliage-free winter woods gives the hunter a much better look at where he needs to be next fall. He can select specific trees to set up stands appropriate to intercept deer during morning or evening movements. He also should pick out alternative trees in each area, allowing for different setups to suit the specific wind conditions on any given day, always figuring to place an ambush on the downwind side of whatever travel lane he wants to cover.

It may be difficult to get enthusiastic about deer homework when the next phase of actual hunting is many months away. Rest assured, however, there are discoveries to be made now that next fall can make the difference between venison stew and deer tag soup.

~Steve Vantreese is outdoors editor of The Paducah Sun.