3 Easy Ways to Summer Scout with Your Kids

If you have a family or little ones, you know how challenging it can be to balance life and hunting. Joining the two naturally makes sense. While there’s a fine line between cultivating an interest in hunting and making it a chore no one wants to do, you can gradually introduce your kids to it by letting them tag along with you. Besides, if you’re trying to score some brownie points for the fall, giving your spouse or significant other a little me-time can help you do just that.

Even if you just want to introduce them to scouting, here are a few ways to summer scout with your kids that don’t involve running them through a mini bootcamp.

When he was still alive, my grandfather would load me and my cousins into his Toyota pickup, and we’d ride through his hunting club. He did this year-round but especially during the summer. Sometimes we’d stop to check blackberry patches in recent cut-overs or look for ripe persimmons or summer grapes dropping into the gravel roads. My grandfather had plenty of stories tied to these spots. As he drove, he’d point across a cut-over to where he’d once killed a turkey or an SMZ where he shot a buck and ran his truck into the ditch after loading it up.

He rarely made these rides about hunting, even though I know he used them as little scouting trips. They were a great way to include me and my cousins, and those rides, along with my grandfather’s stories, made us look forward to hunting season.

Even if you don’t leave the truck, riding gives you an easy way to get the kids out of the house and show them something new. You can monitor spots from the road, glass, or even try door knocking. Either way, it doesn’t take a ton of effort.

I recently made the mistakes of dragging my two daughters with me to hang a trail cam during the hottest part of the day. Normally, this little trip wouldn’t be an issue for them, but it was a long, hot walk (way to go, Dad). It wasn’t long before the tears started and I was swatting mosquitos while haphazardly putting their hair into buns. Luckily, there’s a way to include your kids on a trail cam mission without collective and instant regret.

As long as you take them early in the morning or late in the evening, setting a trail camera with your kids is a great way to include them in scouting. Depending on their age, make sure the walk or hike doesn’t feel like the journey to Mordor. Otherwise, there won’t be a repeat trip. If it feels like fun to them, they’re more likely to want to do it again or even help you during your set up process.

Don’t only include them in the work process either. My girls love seeing photos and videos of deer or other critters, and it’s a way to show them that the “work” we did to hang those cameras actually paid off.

In my home office, I have a pair of binoculars that lives on my desk. Every time my girls come visit me throughout the day, it’s the first thing they reach for before heading to the window. Why? Because glassing is cool whether you’re 5 or 35.

Glassing from the road can be an effective way to summer scout without putting pressure on deer. It’s also an easy one for kids, because they get to ride in the A/C and you don’t have to worry about hosing them down with bug spray. Plus, you can bring snacks. If there’s one thing that will keep kids interested, it’s snacks.

You can also teach them how to glass. It’s not the same glassing that’s required to spot the ear twitch of a bedded deer, just the casual viewing of a few deer feeding in a field. It’s also worth noting that you don’t have to glass where you plan on hunting. There’s valuable intel in just observing deer, even if you can’t hunt them. Besides, your kids won’t know the difference either.

If you’re hoping to get your kids into hunting, scouting trips can be a great intro. Just remember to keep it simple. The goal is to help them enjoy the outdoors, not resent them.