What's the best way to find reprod? I'm also one of those "new hunters that go several years without success." I'm hoping to finally break the tag soup streak as the rut starts up this year.
Google Earth (GE) is great for finding reprod, but the sat. photos can be several years old, so you have to extrapolate sometimes. It takes a bit of experience in comparing GE photos to on-site viewing in a cut to understand what the trees on GE need to look like. Typically, once you can start to see individual trees, the spot is just getting good. When you can see actual tree shapes on sat. photos, the trees are too big.
Here's a cut that is 6 - 7 year old trees. The photo is a year old, so the trees are a year younger in the pic . It is perfect this year. Tree sizes vary from 5 feet (Grand Fir) to maybe 12 - 14 feet (Doug Fir). Next year it will be much harder to hunt as the trees get bigger. Down in SW WA, by year 8 after planting, hunting is getting really tough. The trees may be 15 - 20 feet tall.
The second photo is the same cut a year earlier (2017). It was very huntable and held deer during the day, but there was too little cover for heavy day use (in my eyes). If you knew where the trails/funnels were that the deer used, you could find deer in there. Even this year, many of those funnels are obscured so that they cannot be seen from any distance.
