Ep. 496: Summer Scouting Mountain Bucks — Trail Cameras, Cuts vs. Mature Timber, and Why Deer Disappear on Opener w/ Johnny Stewart
About this episode
Beau Martonik and Johnny Stewart discuss summer scouting techniques for mountain bucks, including trail camera strategies and deer behavior as archery season approaches.
Beau Martonik sits down with Johnny Stewart -- a PA-based DIY public land hunter with 30+ years of big woods experience across Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, West Virginia, Ohio, and North Dakota. This one is all about summer scouting. Johnny breaks down how he runs trail cameras from April through September purely for inventory (confirming a buck survived the winter), why he almost never moves cameras in summer even if they are not producing, and the pattern he and Beau figured out for why bucks vanish from cuts the moment archery season opens. Turns out it is not always pressure. Sometimes it comes down to food, and not the food sources you would expect. They also dig into the mature forest / mature buck correlation -- including a story about a late-season WV buck that left his bed specifically to eat shelf mushrooms off a downed cherry log -- glassing velvet bucks from road vantage points, and Johnny's philosophy on mid-October scouting and hunting where the deer isn't. Plus gear talk on the Timber Ninja Kunai and new Mini Kunai, the advantage of hunting with a cameraman, and a teaser on a University of Georgia study showing that fresh scrapes glow in UV light. Topics: 00:00:00…
More episodes of East Meets West Hunt
- Ep. 500: 50 Years of Big Woods Hunting Lessons w/ My Dad, Joe Martonik
- Ep. 499: The Hardest Deer We've Ever Tried to Bowhunt w/ Collin Heaps
- Ep. 498: What Deer See at Scrapes That You Never Will (New Research)
- Ep. 497: Giant Bucks in Mountain Laurel Nobody Else Will Hunt w/ Pat Burns
- Ep. 495: Wild Game Cooking Deep Dive — Bear Fat, Venison Burgers, and Freezer Turkey w/ Allie D'Andrea & Nick Berger
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