Wanna peek at a topo map for me?

Property outlined in red (about 130 acres), the valley floor north of the prop line/creek is just grassy pasture this year, supposedly some years it is soybeans.

I don't have a solid idea what the deer are eating aside from acorns. We have solid buck sign on top of the ridges, but have only really just started trying to crack the nut on this place. There's an old logging road up on the ridge, but its otherwise undeveloped old timber.

Any billy-goat deer experts care to help out a recovering corn field hunter from OH by saying how you'd hunt this place? The marker in the NE corner is where we will park/camp so access should be from there. I removed the markers for our current stands, so I'm curious how they may line up with others' thoughts.

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I would look for creek crossings and those would be one place I'd start if there are any. I'd also look in the area where those two ridges split. It seems like that would funnel the deer into one of two directions. You might be able to catch the deer traveling both sides. The northwest side near that B also has my interest. This is coming from a flatlander though. I'm also curious to know where my thoughts line up with those in the know.

To find big bucks you have to have a large amount of buck sign i.e. rubs, scrapes, with licking branches. Big bucks make big rubs 3" to 4" tree usually red cedar, pine or other soft wood.  Rubs and scrapes should be where scent will blow toward doe's habitat, usually on top or ridge of hills. That said, the deer's well used traveling trails should look like bare ground. Deer range for nonmigratory whitetail may be an odd shaped 1 square mile area 640 acres. If the white oak mast crop is good this year deer will be feeding there. Scout always wear rubber boots and don't touch anything with bare hands. Stay on your stand all day, and 30 minutes before dawn be in your stand. Use synthetic scent, be ready, if it is going to work it will work fast. If you hear dogs trailing, go to camp, deer will not be traveling. Build some good food plots, the best habitat draws the most deer.

Size of the tree is an indicator, but not foolproof. A rub on a big tree is usually a big buck, but big bucks will rub little trees if those trees are in the right place. The biggest buck I've seen on my place has several rubs on little trees not much bigger than my thumb.

Agreed. The middle finger of the "W" shaped ridge has 5-6 decent fresh-seeming scrapes and 1 or 2 rubs. The Eastern finger has no scrapes yet, but 4-5 fresh rubs. I am sure that there is at least a somewhat mature buck or two up there, just trying to figure out how to get at them and as a fellow flatlander things are a bit different on the mountain. I went up Saturday and put a camera looking down the logging road that has the scrapes, so I'm hoping to have some action up there when I go back in two weeks.

Have you checked to see if there are any creek crossings off of those fingers? I was considering the middle finger as part of the western side since it's a lot smaller, but I guess it's better to consider them 3 separate entities.

If the there are creek crossings, that would be a pretty good bottleneck. Those points where the creek is shallow/slow enough to cross if the rest is too deep/fast would funnel the deer and increase your chance of a sighting. Then again, I don't know if it's too cold during deer season up there for them to be crossing a creek. It may act as a barrier.

No, there is only one small depression that holds water on the top of the ridge. Most of the draws carry some water down in heavy rains. The northern property border is a 15-20 ft wide creek with 24/7 running water at knee high or so. The dot-dash lines in the valleys on the E and W red lines I drew are both normally dry creek beds. The whole area is extremely rocky and has lots of shale.

Also, I really haven't been out on that far western ridge. Where all 3 of the fingers come together, the .gov decided to clear cut a bunch of the timber this past spring. So instead of being able to walk the ridge all around, you have to drop down some elevation and skirt around the clear cut.