OK, so I thought I always put my stand at the right height... usually about ~15 feet off the ground or so. Sometimes 20, but you can't always get that high in a climber without cutting some branches. At 15 feet, I've taken a lot of deer. But, on my last trip out in the woods I saw a guy's stand (empty) that was at LEAST 35 feet up a big oak. Have I been missing something, or was this just a crazy-high stand? The terrain didn't necessarily call for it -- I could understand if you had some hills on each side and you wanted to be up and out of their eye level coming over the hill, but this was a flat area on top of a small rise.
I usually try to keep mine between 15 and 20, usually around 18ish. I do have one stand that is 35 feet, but the tree is in a creek bed, so I'm only up about 20 feet from where the deer usually are
In my opinion, 35' gives you a pretty poor shot angle. Hard to get a double-lung hit from that high. I have a buddy that is scared of heights and he kills a lot of good bucks from no more than 10'. I am usually between 15 and 20. I killed my largest buck a couple of years ago from about 12'. I think the type of cover you have really dictates the height you need to be.
That's what I thought, too... I just couldn't get the optimal kill-zone angle figured in my head for something that high. Maybe on a field edge where you can take a 40 yard shot, but not in heavy woods. My typical "woods height" is more like 15'. And the thing that's even odder than the height? It looked like a climbing stand... not sure how he got back down unless he fell, rappelled, or used climbing sticks
Sounds real high to me. My stands go up accordingly to being hid. Some are 20 feet high while others have been as low as 6 feet.
I mostly sit around 15' - 20', but I have one (my highest) stand set up that's 30'. I've yet to get busted from that 30' set up. Just saying.
Sometimes one will climb to that 30-35 foot level when they are hunting on the side of a steep hill. They do not want to get picked off by deer walking above them on the terrain. The zone they are looking at killing deer in will effectively place their shots at about 20-25 feet above their intended quarry. I have climbed 30 feet high before on purpose just so I would not get picked off by something cruising by at an above elevation. These days I feel like 15 feet is high enough with my recurve. Steeper angles higher than 15 feet high are a little tricky for me with this bow because it is all so new to me.
I like mine about 16 to 20 feet. Like others have said it depends on the cover or background I have. The wife has a little 10 latter stand she has killed alot of deer out of.
Depends on the terrain, cover and how I expect deer to approach the area I am in. I am not comfortable with hunting from hang on stands, so I do most of my hunting from a climber or ladder. With either, I'm generally between 12 and 20 feet. I've seen stands hung by people I hunt with between 30 and 40 feet. I guess you have to do what the situation calls for.
Doesn't it depend on the conditions in which you are shooting? I think situations where the stand needs to be 25+ feet are relatively rare though.
Sounds like you HAVE seen it / done it, but it's not all that common. As for me, I've been hunting out of stands for nearly 3 decades, and never put one that high. Part of that might be because I grew up in flat terrain, but I was pretty curious about this 35' stand. This is my first year hunting here since I moved to the area, and wasn't sure if it was a common thing to do around here or not. Thought maybe that might have been why I've been so badly skunked since opening day. In Texas, I rarely found a tree that would hold a stand any higher than 10 feet! And when I lived in Illinois, I was typically in the 15' range.
In Texas, did you have a lot of brush behind you, like good cover ? Similar to what one would be used to seeing in the average "Texas deer hunt" video or show ? I wish I could hunt higher. My brother hunts VERY high up because he said he's able to get away with a little extra movement. He constantly yells at me about hunting to low, and, I do get busted moving, a lot...But I just dont feel comfortable. Do you get busted a lot ? My brother pointed out to me that he and I could hunt the same exact area on the same exact wind and he would see more deer because deer are seeing me move before I ever see them.
Actually, in Texas I rarely used a climbing / portable tree stand. Most of our setups were permanent box blinds or permanent tree platforms, and we rarely got busted. But getting a deer within bow range was a little harder -- most of our blinds/stands were set up for gun season. And yes, the brush was pretty dense on our land (and so were the rattlesnakes!!) Definitely a different type of hunting than here in the rolling hills / oak trees of Virginia!
I guarantee that if most people actually took a tape measure into a tree with them they'd be a LOT less high than they think for their stands. I've been 25' up a tree and being over 6' tall, that's just dizzying height from the ground! To me 20' is putting it in the nose-bleed section. I won't put a stand above 15'.
15ish but it does depend on my surroundings for sure. I actually missed a 180 class buck from only 6-7 feet up standing on a huge oak tree branch back in 1992. I manage to hit the barbed wire that was 6 inches abouve the fence. Had I been up a little higher I wouldn't be here typing this right now, grrrr
