Most of today’s Pennsylvania hunters would tend to agree that the Pennsylvania Game Commission has done a very good job overall of presenting opportunities to hunt throughout our state for whatever game you choose to pursue. This is particularly evident with the increase of days for hunting whitetail deer and black bear. Further, three days of Sunday hunting should provide increased odds for hunting success this fall.

The archery deer season is set to open on Saturday, October 3 and the archery and muzzleloader bear season will begin on Saturday, October 17. This year, the fall turkey season begins on Saturday, October 31. While scouting should be a year-round pursuit, it’s now time to take a more serious approach to finding out just what is wandering about in our nearby fields and woods. With just over 6 weeks until the deer season opener and just over 8 weeks until the chance to take a Pennsylvania black bear, caution should be used when scouting out your potential hunting sites. The last thing you want to do is leave a lot of human scent in the woods and along the trails that may just make a wily old buck or tank-sized bruin leave the area for greater seclusion.

The next few trips into the woods should be focused on placing trail cameras that can provide up to the minute data on what, when and where wildlife of all kinds is traveling, feeding and bedding. This accurate data will allow you to more wisely plan out your fall hunting, and will greatly reduce the amount of time you need to spend physically scouting – thus reducing the amount of human scent you will be leaving in the areas you want to hunt.

Today’s trail cameras are nothing less than highly technical miniature cameras and computers combined. The camera’s programming capability and the quality of either photo images or videos is amazing. Depending on the range of options and capabilities of an individual camera, the prices can run from several hundred dollars to under $100.00. There are even some cameras that can be set up in series, as repeaters, that relay from one to another, thus increasing the distance you can place the cameras and still have quality photos that can even be sent directly to a smart phone or laptop computer. Talk to fellow hunters, particularly archery hunters, since they tend to use trail cameras more often. Do the research regarding what cameras will work best where you plan to hunt and then, get busy placing them and gathering and interpreting the data they collect.

Deer and bear will have preferred feeding areas, preferred travel routes and preferred bedding areas. Use of these trail cameras will give you the best chance to determine these spots with minimal disturbance to the area because of your presence. Standing field corn is a really good draw for both bear and deer this time of year and thus, well placed cameras will tell you if they are using these fields as well as identify their travel route into and out of the fields. Soon, acorns will begin to drop, and acorns, particularly white oak acorns are a preferred food of both deer and bear. Once you have evidence of where the deer or bear are feeding, and have determined their travel route, you can move a camera further into the woods to help zero in on the exact trails they may be using, and also just where their bedding area is located.

Until the first heavy frosts, wild turkeys will be working the fields in search of grasshoppers and other insects. They will also focus their feeding activity on clovers, grasses and some farm crops. Once the acorns begin to drop, they will be scratching through the leaves for acorns. Wild grapes are also a favorite, along with beechnuts. Small brooks or water seeps in remote areas are a great spot to set up cameras that will capture images of all kinds of wildlife activity.

You can still spend time scouting, but do so from a distance with a good pair of binoculars or a spotting scope. Let your cameras do the 24-hour legwork for you, and keep your human scent away from what you plan to hunt.