There are some people that believe hunting should just be go to the woods, with your rifle or bow, and start walking around looking for deer. They are opposed to things like setting up feed piles of corn or apples, having cameras set up to find common paths for deer, etc. I suspect the latter where someone spend pre-season effort to find where they are is what's meant by scouting.

A personal note on that - I've done those things for years, seen big bucks on trail cams, bought bags of feed corn, watched them eating them on the trail cam, then gone to that spot and never seen deer in hunting season. :)