Discuss your best hunting stand. The one you save for the right time and have the most success out of. Why is that your best stand? What do you think makes it so good? Why does that location make it such a good stand? Is it over a plot? Is it in the timber? Transition area? Is it early season stand? Rut Stand? Late season stand? How do you hunt it to make sure it stays good Are we talking gun or bow? Did you have to perform some type of habitat improvement to make it a good stand or was it naturally a great stand. Explain. Pictures and aerials are always a help!
Nearest my licking branches I set up. All season long but mostly I move based on the most recent available sign to much to have dedicated stands for bowhunting so the licking branches I set up become actual scrapes and are very productive but I dont dare overhunt them.
Ill get back to you on that...all my stands are new this year. As far as my previous best stand....I called it the killin tree. It was a big knarly hedge apple in the middle of a 30 acre peat bog. 2-3 inches of standing water coveres everything most of the time, but on the southeast corner there is a spot of high ground of about 3/4 of an acre, covered in 10 ft tall horseweeds. My stand was right in the middle of it. I never hunted it until all crops were down, rut had started, wind was perfect out of the North, and I was ready for an all day sit. In 4 years I hunted it 6 times, and I put 3 deer on my wall out of that tree. One on Oct 27th at 4pm, One on Nov 4th at 3:30 PM, and one on Nov 7th at 2:30 PM. But alas...I let that spot go this spring. My avatar pic is taken out of that tree...
changes year to year... some years I have very hot stands... and the next year they are dead. very strange. I have a couple that generally lead to a kill... but nothing special.
I have a couple on one food plot 1 stand for an east wind 1 for most other winds. I don't hunt early season so it is all rut stands. The plot is in a depression and I spent 10 years making the perfect funnel. Both stands are tied to old white oaks where at 21' up the trunk diameter is wider than my shoulders. As far as a weapon there is no question we are at bow hunting .com right?
Everything you mentioned is true. Wind, season, rut determine where you sit not one "perfect" stand imo since it may be a perfect stand now n not next week.
I have a stand about 35' up in a big cedar tree right on the edge of a hay field. All hay in front of me with a 30x60 yard field that is just overgrown with weeds about 4' tall and behind me is the thickest bull briar you could imagine. I've shot a couple good bucks in there. It's incredibly finicky though. Some years I can hunt there and see 12 deer a night, other years I don't see a single one. A lot has to do with the acorns. It will be interesting this year. Last year almost all of the farm was converted to a solar farm so I'm not even sure if I'll be able to hunt it. That stand was left untouched but I'm not sure where the other hunters will go that hunt on the property. I kinda had my own little slice of paradise off the beaten path because no one wanted to deal with the weeds.
Mine is a ridge line with houses to my south and a valley to my north that holds water fairly well so from early season all the way to the rut i can count on deer stopping by for a drink.
On Property #1 it is just off the fence line in a grove of trees that run down to the creek. I can see the deer coming from either direction for about 10 yards. I have killed over 10 deer here. On Property #2 it is one I hung just off the creek. I can walk the creek all the way in, come up, take 10 steps and be in my stand. I can see the field in front of me and a ridge to my right rear. Should be a great early season/pre-Rut stand.
Low gap in a mountain. It's a gun stand and I only hunt it a few times a year but its an all day stand as deer pass through at all hours.
I have a dozen permanent box stands and 3 portable blinds. Depends on the wind, sun, time of day, time of year, whether the oaks are dropping or if the apples are dropping. Once the rut kicks in.......... all bets are off!
My current best stand is a 16' ladder stand on the top of a ridge facing east. There's a deer trail that goes left and right about 10-15 yards in front of it. My mock scrape is about 30 yards (give or take) to my front right. I've only taken 2 deer from it, a button buck that I thought was a doe and a small basket 6, but I've only owned the property for 6 years. I took the deer the first 2 years and then I have been skunked the past 4, so this stand is gradually losing its appeal. It's a bow only stand, it's close quarters with anything you'd see from it. No habitat changes were needed for it. I have a few other stands (for bow or gun) and I'm working on a new spot in a big tree above some really thick brush (for bow only) that I think the bucks travel through in secrecy.
I dont have a favorite stand just this year yet becauce we moved out of state last year. I will just talk about my old favorite. Its was a stand in the middle of acres and acres of oaks but the are that i had my stand in was about a 6 acre patch of nothing but big white oaks,if you know anything about acorns then you know deer will eat white acorns over any other acorn.There was a steep rivine on the one side that wrapped around to the bottom side,and a road on the other side,at the top of the patch was a 1/2 acre grass field. the rivine,road and field would all funnel the deer through and 30 yard strip and when the acorns were dropping it was absolutly dinamite but as soon as the acorns stopped dropping it was pretty much dead.Deer would come back and forth all day and sometimes I would see 25/35 deer a day(one time I saw 22 deer in 4 1/2 hours) The only bad thing about it was that you had to get there early but then in the evening I would have somebody drive past on road and then I would slip out the back.
My best stand is on the side of a point off the southern edge of a doe bedding area. Oddly enough, only about 60yds from my parents place. It's a combination of hemlock and young growth from a timber harvest. It's about a 100yd strip between open hardwoods above my parents house to the south and our main plot to the north. A few bucks cruise right past my stand, but even if they don't, most can be coerced this time of year with some timely grunts. I don't hunt it until starting about the last 5 days in October. I've shot 4 bucks out of this stand in the last 5 years. Two of which were standing in the same exact lane (2013 and 2014).
My best stand was in a hickory right off an apple "orchard'. It was wild but 4-5 trees always seemed to produce apples. I shot a doe every year the first day out of that stand and usually a buck closer to the rut. I never sat in that tree without seeing deer. A few years ago a tornado came through. I haven't found a spot like that since.
I got one with a water hole to the northeast, a white oak grove to the south, and a big cedar brake to the west. It's actually two in one, because it's a funnel about 65 yards wide with a bluff to the south and a creek to the north. I hunt the northeast tree up until the prevailing winds change, and then I hunt a tree growing out of the bluff. Killed a lot of deer there, but no monsters. As a matter of fact, this will be the first year in 29 seasons of bowhunting during which I will have killed a monster. Shootin' for 2 Popers this year...
This is my brothers 80 acres. I don't hunt it outside of rifle season. I shot my mounter buck out of the stand in 2012 and my brother has shot numerous 8s the last few years. My brother had the biggest buck we have ever had on camera just out of bow range sitting in the stand last year. It's simply a point that is surrounded by one of the thickest willow swamps I've seen. There is a nice pond on the inside end of the point. The stand is set on a big willow on the west edge of the pond. We also have a small clover "kill plot" on the east side of the pond. Primarily hunt it pre-rut/rut but have also had success during early season with deer moving from their bedding in the swamp, to the pond, to the clover/oat plot and corn/beans we have just to the north. I've never experienced a stand like this during the pre-rut/rut... Non stop action of bucks cruising the edge of the willows looking for does and stopping for a drink. Exactly how it played out with my 8 point I have on the wall. Came in grunting from the willows, stopped at the pond for a drink, and continued on his way... Unfortunately for him he was 30 yards out from my 30-06 and dropped where he stood.
