Although he wouldn't be hunting until months later, author Mark Kayser braved August's heat to set up the stand from which he arrowed this Pope & Young buck. Kayser's trophy was following a trail that the hunter had hacked out with a machete. Photo by Mark Kayser.

Choosing the perfect setup for bowhunting whitetails is frequently like choosing the perfect truck: The glam, glitz and accessories of sportier models often pull you away from the practicality that you really need.

Top-producing whitetail stands, and particularly those intended for the ambush of trophy bucks, aren't necessarily associated with manicured food plots or virgin properties behind locked gates. Instead, the practicality of survival lures mature bucks to areas of dense cover separated by expanses of rugged or remote terrain. Trophy-grade deer may occasionally be tempted by food plots, but they regularly treat themselves only after sneaking in from the perfect hideout under the cover of darkness.

Getting that "perfect whitetail setup" together requires research and on-the-ground scouting -- chores you can't postpone until the day before the season. If you aim for success this fall, leave the fishing gear at home for a few summer weekends and spend the time preparing the area in which you mean to down that monster.

A debate on the merits of summer scouting rages in the whitetail hunting community. By fall, some argue, change has too drastically diminished the value of information gleaned in summer, leaving you hanging when the season opens; others build the entirety of their hunts on summer's observations, keying in on what's learned about bachelor groups, successful summer crops and established whitetail travel routes.

I decided long ago (with advice from seasoned experts) that summer's the time for scouting and for identifying sites for autumn's tree stands and ground blinds. Why sacrifice a weekend at the beach? First of all, by late summer, whitetails have ordinarily chosen a home territory and settled into a routine that often centers on agricultural fields brimming with deer food. Second, foliation in the whitetail woods is never denser than it is in high summer, which enables you to see clearly any alterations needed to improve access to stands or to divert deer traffic towards your stand. And finally, summer is the time of year, hunting season excepted, that brings the most human intrusion into the deer's homes, so your unwelcome surprise, however shocking, will likely be one among many, and will probably be forgotten before the season rolls around.

SCOUTING AT HOME
You can save yourself a few mosquito bites by first scouting at home in air-conditioned comfort.

Through the Internet you can find an array of satellite images of your hunting area that you can purchase for a small fee. And a topographical map can be useful for identifying ridges, coulees and waterways hidden below the leafy canopy obscuring the surface in photos from orbit.

Correlating a satellite image with the data from a topographical map will give you a good start on envisioning the lay of the land and visually picking out the funnels, pinch points and terrain features that whitetails will follow on your hunting property. Be particularly attentive to waterways, field edges, connecting arms of timber ridges and regions removed from human activity.

As you locate terrain features that may be of use to whitetails, make a note to follow up with a firsthand scouting trip. As these features hold the key to your fall ambush locations, you'll also want to expand your research to surrounding properties (without, needless to say, committing trespass). Look for the nearest agricultural activity, and for dense cover, water sources and unusual topography -- anything likely to draw whitetails from your property onto neighboring property and vice versa.