I can waste an embarrassing amount of time looking at hunting maps.
Sometimes I'm scouting.
Sometimes I'm planning.
And sometimes I'm just staring at satellite imagery in February because pheasant season ended months ago and apparently this is what I do now.
But when hunting season actually starts getting close, I'm looking at those maps differently.
Most of my pheasant hunting is done on public ground, and when I'm heading somewhere I already know, I can usually hunt the property in my head before I ever get there.
Park here.
Start in this field.
Work toward that piece of cover.
Cut through here.
Hit that field next.
Eventually work our way back toward the truck.
When I'm looking at a new piece of public ground, I try to do the same thing.
The difference is I'm building that hunt from scratch.
And the first thing I'm looking for isn't pheasants.
It's parking.
Because before I start worrying about where the birds might be, I want to know where I'm starting. From there, I start working my way across the map just like I'll eventually work my way across the property.
What's the first field look like? What's beyond it? Where does the cover change? Is there food nearby? Where does the terrain get interesting? Is there another piece worth hitting on the other side?
Basically, I'm trying to walk the property before I ever walk the property.
The map isn't going to tell me where the roosters are.
But it can give me a pretty damn good idea where I want to start looking.
I'm Looking for Messy
Once I know where I'm parking and have a rough idea of how I might work the property, I start looking closer at the cover.
And usually, I'm looking for a mess.
A giant square of grass might look great on a map. And there absolutely could be birds in it. But when I'm deciding where I want to spend my time, the places that really catch my attention are where things start changing.
Grass running into a cut cornfield.
A shelterbelt alongside a slough.
A scraggly old fence line cutting through otherwise open ground.
Cattails snaking through the middle of a field.
A little chunk of grass stuck in a corner where farming around it was apparently easier than farming through it.
Those are the places where I start dropping pins.
I especially like irregular edges. If one field has a perfectly straight border and another has grass, crops, brush and heavier cover all weaving in and out of each other, I'm probably looking harder at the second one.
It's just more interesting.
More edges. More transitions. More places where one type of cover turns into another.
Cattail sloughs are another thing that immediately get my attention, especially the smaller fingers that run through otherwise huntable ground. I can look at one of those and start thinking about how I'd actually hunt it before I've ever been there.
Where would I enter?
Can I work the edge?
Does it narrow somewhere?
Is there a spot where the cover pinches down and gives the birds fewer options if they start running ahead?
That's really what I'm doing when I e-scout.
I'm not just looking for something that appears "birdy."
I'm looking for pieces of the property that give me a reason to hunt them a certain way.
Because 200 acres of beautiful grass can look pretty damn good from the couch.
But it can also turn into 200 acres of following your dog around while wondering why you thought this was such a great idea.
Give Me Food, Cover and Somewhere to Hide
Finding good-looking cover is one thing.
What really gets my attention is when that cover has something else going for it.
If I'm looking at two similar pieces of grass and one of them butts right up against a cut cornfield, I'm probably starting there. Add a cattail slough, shelterbelt, grassy waterway, or some heavier cover nearby and now I'm really interested.
I'm looking for places where the birds don't have to go very far to get what they need.
They can feed in one spot, move into heavier cover, and have somewhere to tuck in when the weather gets ugly.
And the closer those things are together, the more interesting that piece of ground becomes to me.
This is also where I start paying more attention to water.
A creek winding through a property, a pond, wetland, drainage, or even just a low area that looks noticeably different on satellite imagery can be worth a closer look. Sometimes it's the water itself that interests me. Other times it's what grows around it.
And if I'm hunting with a dog, water has another obvious benefit.
She needs it.
That doesn't mean I'm planning a hunt around finding her a drinking fountain in the middle of every field. I'm still carrying water for her. But if I'm choosing between routes on a warmer day and one keeps us closer to natural water, that's something I'm going to notice.
As the season gets later, I'm also paying more attention to the heavier stuff.
A wide-open grass field might have looked fantastic early in the year. Once the wind is howling and the temperature drops, that cattail slough, shelterbelt, or protected draw starts looking a whole lot better.
That's one of the reasons I don't look at any single feature on the map and decide, "Yep, that's the spot."
I'm looking at what's around it.
Grass is good.
Food is good.
Heavy cover is good.
Water is good.
But put a few of those things together in the same little corner of a property?
Now I've got a place I want to walk.
Sometimes Harder to Get To Is Better
Here's something else I'm looking at when I'm scouting public ground:
How easy is it to hunt?
Because if I can pull into a nice parking lot, step out of the truck, and be standing in beautiful pheasant cover two minutes later, so can everybody else.
I'm not saying pheasants know where the parking lot is.
But after opening weekend, I'm pretty sure they have a general idea.
That's why some of the spots that interest me most aren't necessarily the easiest ones to get to.
Maybe there's a good-looking piece of cover way in the back that requires a decent walk just to reach it.
Maybe I have to cross a field that doesn't look all that exciting before getting to the stuff I actually want to hunt.
Maybe there's a little pocket tucked into an awkward corner of the property that would be easy to overlook if you were just driving around looking for somewhere to stop.
Those little inconveniences start getting my attention.
Public-land birds get pressured. And I'm going to assume the easiest, most obvious cover gets pressured first.
That doesn't mean I automatically skip anything close to a parking area. There could absolutely be birds there.
But when I'm looking at the map, I'm also asking myself a different question:
Where would I probably not bother walking if I were tired, running late, or just looking for an easy hunt?
That's usually worth a closer look.
I'll also look for signs that an area might get a lot of traffic. Obvious trails, easy access from multiple directions, or a small piece of cover surrounded by public ground can all make me wonder how many people have already walked through it.
Sometimes the opposite is what I'm looking for.
A longer walk.
An awkward route.
A piece of cover that doesn't look particularly impressive from the road.
Anything that might make another hunter look at it and say, "Nah, let's try somewhere else."
Because on public land, sometimes the best feature a piece of cover can have isn't visible in the grass, crops, or cattails.
It's the extra half-mile between it and the truck.
The Map Doesn't Get the Final Vote
After all that scouting, pin dropping, route planning, and staring at satellite imagery, there's one important thing to remember.
The map can still be completely wrong.
Well, maybe not wrong. But what you're looking at on your screen isn't necessarily what you're going to find when you get there.
Satellite imagery gets old.
Crops rotate.
Grass gets cut.
Water levels change.
That beautiful piece of cover you spent twenty minutes planning a route through might look completely different when you pull up to it.
I've had places that looked fantastic on a map turn into a pretty quick, "Well...this isn't what I expected."
That's hunting.
And it's why I try not to get too attached to the plan I made from the couch.
If I get there and the cover doesn't look right, I'll change the plan.
If there's already a truck in the parking area, I'll change the plan.
If the route I mapped out doesn't make nearly as much sense once I'm actually standing there, I'll change the plan.
And sometimes the opposite happens.
A piece I didn't think much of on the map looks a whole lot better from ground level.
Or we start working through an area I hadn't planned on spending much time in and suddenly the dog starts getting birdy.
At that point, I don't care what my pins say.
We're hunting.
That's really what e-scouting is for me.
I'm not trying to predict exactly where a rooster is going to be sitting Tuesday morning at 9:17.
I'm trying to show up with a plan instead of wandering around hoping we stumble into something.
The map gets us started.
But once we're out there, the dog gets the final vote.
Have a Plan. Then Go Hunt.
In the end, that's all I really want from the map.
I want to know where I'm parking, where I'm starting, what pieces of cover I want to hit, and roughly how I want to work my way through them.
Will the plan change once I get there?
Probably.
But I'd rather pull into a new piece of public ground with a handful of pins and some idea of what I want to do than stand at the tailgate trying to figure it out for the first time.
E-scouting lets me walk the property before I ever walk the property.
Then it's time to put the phone away, let the dog out, and find out whether I knew what the hell I was looking at.
Sometimes all those pins lead to birds.
Sometimes they lead to a really long walk back to the truck.