Preparing for a Hunting Road Trip

Low budget hunting and fishing road trips have become a staple of mine over the last few years. Very similar to how my recent college graduate colleagues go on backpacking trips and stay in hostels in Europe, I fish the North East in an aluminum death roller and sleep in my truck. Personally, I find it to be a tragedy that they can’t find it within themselves to realize my way is clearly the better option, but I won’t take the time to explain it to them. Just means a shorter line at the boat ramp.

In all seriousness, these trips have been an overwhelmingly positive addition to my life. A chance to see the most beautiful scenery in some of the most famous hunting and fishing destinations in the country. It takes more effort than if I was to just book a hotel or jump on a plane, but the dirtbag nature of the whole experience adds something to the trip. The fifteen minute hotel reservation and guide booking I am sure is an easy stress free process in comparison to the weeks of preparation and research, and I don’t want to disrespect anyone that likes that lifestyle. Maybe later in my life that will be me. For now, however, I would like to explain to you the nature of how I do things.

The majority of preparation time is scouting. One might wonder how I could possibly have any idea what I am doing when it comes to hunting or fishing new ground sometimes ten hours from home. The simple answer is for the post part I don’t have any idea what I am doing, and that is the most important rule of E-Scouting I have found. No matter how much work you put in ahead of time, how many contour maps, topo maps, weather reports, or forums you read you could still pull up to the first pin and find its blocked by miles of green briars lying under the canopy and out of view from your satellite images.

Take what you see with a grain of salt. Recognize E-Scouting for what it is, somewhat of a crap shoot. Don’t get me wrong it is my favorite tool in my tool box and something I am constantly using to sanity check my gut feelings but it isn’t perfect. I will give you an example of how I approach E-Scouting from a Turkey trip I took to the Virginia hills this spring to explain my process.

I settled on doing this trip late November of 2022 when a friend who recently moved to Virginia wanted to get into hunting turkeys. A few weeks later I already had an array of onX pins all over the Virginia Hills.

Step one was a survey of the area surrounding his apartment. Fortunately for us, step one was an astounding success when I realized the George Washington and Thomas Jefferson forest were in his backyard. We had plenty of public land at our disposal, 1.8 million acres extending up and down the entire Virginia-West Virginia border for us to roam.

The downside to this large swath of land at our disposal is the tremendous amount of time I would have to set aside to cover all of this country. It was almost overwhelming. I had to find some way to cut this up into bite sized pieces. Just out of convenience I put a one hour driving limit from his apartment. While this may seem lazy to some, it still left us tens of thousands of acres to choose from, and I had to make the first round of cuts somehow.

What makes this area so unique is the extremely steep rolling hills, and very limited remote access. This eliminates an additional portion of the forest that the closest road is a ten mile or more hike to, there just wasn’t enough time in the trip for this size a commitment. What I highlighted as areas of interest consisted of long main ridges we could get to before sun up with enough distance for us to work the finger ridges and cover as much ground as possible, while remaining in what I believed to be a sweet spot. The goal was to keep useless travel in areas I was pessimistic would hold birds to a minimum.

A tip I learned on a fishing trip to Upstate New York, is to always have a plan B, C, and D. I made sure to highlight a few areas that were similar in terms of access to higher elevation but each were unique in their own right. The differences I looked for from spot to spot was tree composition on onX (although not always the most accurate can give a good rough idea), mean elevation gain, water sources, and type of access (which I equated to the amount of hunting pressure). By allowing for many quick pivots in strategy if we struggled to find the birds on day one we can quickly pivot without having to e-scout a new area, simply set the destination to the next pin.

The caveat specific to this situation is to not pick too many areas of interest. I have found when I mark too many potential pivot spots it defeats the purpose of a quick switch and the dozens of options you marked become overwhelming and you end up in an analysis paralysis state scouring through your marks. In the end you most likely won’t make the pivot at all. Make sure to keep it simple, limit your pivots to your top three or four spots.

Tirelessly pouring over satellite imagery isn’t the only crucial part of long distance scouting. I will also consume hours of turkey hunting videos and podcasts, many of which were very specific to the location and time of year I was hunting in. You can learn anything on YouTube and hunting Virginia turkeys is no different. It allows you a simulated feeling of experience and confidence through watching someone else do it. Confidense is going to be very hard to come by when trying something new for the first time, so this mental win is more important than most realize. I have realized being able to make moves with confidence makes you a much better hunter and angler.

At this point I felt my homework was done. There was little preparation left that would help our success, I felt proud of the due diligence I had done. All that was left was to organize my gear, and get on the road.

Once the truck was packed it was an easy four hour drive from Maryland to Southern Virginia. I decided to get there a day early to get an early lay of the land the day before the season opener. My buddy was still five hours from getting off work so I had a good chunk of time to explore the mountains and see the land I had spent countless hours studying from a birds eye view.

Up until this point I had never spent a second hunting in the mountains, and most of my life had been hunting in the flattest country on Maryland's Eastern Shore. When I got to the base of the first mountain and my truck began climbing the first of the twisty mountain roads I was speechless. Even in the pouring rain it was beautiful. Each wind of the road revealed flowering Honeysuckle and Eastern Redbud. Purple and white flowers decorate the almost shear mountain side. I was excited and nervous at the same time. I was so out of my element with so much country at my disposal to explore the time I had did not seem capable of doing it justice. Regardless, I was excited to make the most of it.

It was this initial drive into the hills that I was able to really appreciate how special these experiences are, I was flooded with emotions. My winter shell was defrosting and I was reminded how amazing it feels to get out of your element and to start from square one in a whole different world.