Germ

Well I was working one up, but mine is real close to this scurvey buckeye's.

His white dot is real similar to one of my spots for chasing.

Campo

Maybe if you TOOK me there Matt I would be able to help you more.

Hint, hint hint.

Check that creek for crossings? That would be the first place I would start. There is most likely movment into that field to the north and east of the creek.

I am about to leave for lunch...so I will post more later.

GregH

First of all you must become a guru at wind and direction. When the wind "blows towards the northeast" you have a SW wind. This is about the most common wind in my area. The other, "(rarely)... blowing towards the south/southwest" is a NNE wind and is the rarest wind for my area.

What I'm getting at, is when you once find a great location for a stand, make note of what wind direction it will be good for.Then try to find locations for the rest of the wind directions. If you call your stands by what wind direction that they're good for, you'll know immediatly which stands you can hunt when you check the wind. You know, its a NW wind today, I'll hunt my NW stand.

As for the maps, I'd start by observing from each end of the ridge that is on your property and from out in the fields in the evenings. You want to find where the does bed as well as the bucks. Then you play chess from there. I like to keep part of my properties as a sanctuary. A place where deer wil feel safe, then hunt the edges of it.

Good luck.

buckeye

Man I could kick myself in the.... well I'm not going to go that far, but I can't believe I missed this spot!

The lime green....

Rick James

Thanks guys, the help is appreciated. Anyone else please feel free to continue providing feedback.

Let me do this with 2x photos in seperate posts that will let me show more detail.
[ul][*]Large pink dots are current stand locations[*]Large yellow dots are spots trimmed to put up a ground blind when the wind is right[*]Small red dots are apple trees[*]Green dots are foodplots that have different seed types and produce forage summer/fall/winter[*]Blue outlined areas are known bedding areas[*]Orange is property line[*]Light blue is an old logging/access road that runs the bottom of that sidehill[/ul]
Keep in mind the wind is almost always blowing towards northeast. It will occasionally in the evenings switch directions and blow south/southwest.

The two southernmost stand locations I put up with intentions of hunting only evenings during early season. We have glassed a LOT of big bucks during late summer including one real slammer I saw last year that would have gone 130 or so. The yellow ground blind location near them APAJaws and I had several encounters with a nice 110" 7 pointer during opening week this year. None of these deer were killed this year that I know of. They stop coming into this with frequency after the first 2x weeks or so but can almost always be spotted in there after dark with a spotlight. They bed VERY close to the field edge here and you have to be careful sneaking in there. Last year and this year we did see does that were being chased up into the open field by mature bucks on 3x occasions all between 11am and 2pm. I will probablydo a couple mid day hunts next year during the first full week in November out of the stand in the point just south of that foodplot on the southwest corner.

The two stands north of the foodplot on the northwest of this pic are fantastic doe killing evening stands all year round, but you can't hunt them much because the wind is rarely right there. During late season they bed right on the edge. I had an encounter there with a pair of very mature does this last weekend where they caught me facing the wrong way and unfortunately my stand is in a tree with no cover in late season, they milled around for about 1/2 an hour before one got downwind of me out in the foodplot and blew my set before I could get situated for a shot. That will get moved this next spring into a tree with better cover for sure. The bottom of that plot is turnips and they love them. The rest it MO Biologic Maximum and next year there will be a strip of clover for early season too. This northwest patch was never used much by deer until this year when we put in the foodplot, now there are 2x family groups of does that live in there consistently but we still have only seen a handful of yearling bucks in there and not much buck sign. Hopefully next year that will change with a second year of good foodplots in there.......if the does are there the bucks will be too. That spot that looks like a pond on the northwest side is actually a gravel pit, not a pond.

You can see 2x stands in the very northeast side of this pic. They are both some real producers for deer sightings. Deer bed on that sidehill in the blue outlined area and in a thicket of 25 year old swampy hemlocks that is just north of that logging road.There is LOTS of buck sign on the bottom in there north of the logging roadin that hemlock patch. You can clearly see the edge on the north side of that hemlock patch just south of the stand location that is furthest northeast here. Several pretty good 100" or so 2.5 year olds were sighted from both of the stands in the northeast cornerof the pic this year and last and there are rubs on trees that are honestly 12" in diameter in those hemlocks. I hunt the thick stuff hard in there but have yet to close the deal on something. Last year my father sighted a buck coming out of that access road crossing the main road on the very last day of late season that he claims was in excess of 140" as a 10 pointer. I believe him because of the sign in there.......tracks on that logging road are sometimes in reality over 4" in length and that logging road is polluted with scrapes.

On to the next pic in another post............feel free to comment on this guys on things you would change or do differently.

buckeye

One main thing that differs from our different styles is I will hardy ever hunt an agriculture or food plot edge. In my experiences I have saw MUCH more buck movement within the timber rather than field hunting.

To add I have never shot a buck in a field edge setup and most of my field setup sightings have been immature bucks. I can honestly sayI only recall seeing 3 mature bucks in a field while I was hunting. I like to get back and hunt the terrain.

davidmil

And man, if you have access to the land to the south you got a slight saddle with a creek below on the East Southeast side and the gradual finger in the big woods just across the property line that leads to the same drainage. Got to be deer coming through there.

Rick James

Alright, another long winded post but bear with me.

Keep in mind I can use the property to the north of this for access to my hunting, but I can't hunt on it.

Alright, once again........
[ul][*]Large pink dots are current stand locations[*]Large yellow dots are spots trimmed to put up a ground blind when the wind is right[*]Small red dots are apple trees[*]Green dots are foodplots that have different seed types and produce forage summer/fall/winter[*]Blue outlined areas are known bedding areas[*]Orange is property line[*]Light blue is an old logging/access road that runs the bottom of that sidehill[/ul]


The two stands furthest southwest were already covered in my last post.....just as reference.

The stand furthest northwest is in an open patch of mature oaks that is right between a very thick 25 year old patch of hemlocks (west)and stream crossing (east). That patch of hemlocks is polluted with rubs of massive size that are seriously in excess of 10". Everytime I hunt that stand I get winded.....I want to move it to somewhere that won't happen. The wind usually blows towards the northeast there and they come from the east and wind me everytime headed in the direction of that bedding patch right next to the main road. I have not seen any big bucks there but the sign is there and I know I am not seeing them because the wind is wrong. Lots of sightings there but I know it can be hunted more effectively. I stopped hunting it 2nd week this year because I knew I was just educating them. I usually hunt it mornings. They are in those hemlocksEVERY time it rains or the weather is bad. Any thoughts on this patch would be appreciated.

The stand just east of the yellow blind location. This is VERY close to where Buckeye put his white dot for an area that bucks run does. He was spot on. I shot my 6 point this year there and while I was gutting him a HUGE chocolote horned 3.5 year old ran a doe within 30 yards of me.........[8D][:@]. There are scrapes in the VERY thick stuff there all over the place that appear in the same spots everyyear including one that remained open all winter/spring/summer/fall in 06 that was big as a car hood. I have only hunted this spot once because I try not to stir it up too much, but plan to save it for late Oct/early Nov next year.Ihaven't pressured this at all outside of the rut and only hunted it once this year. It is perfectly between the 2x most heavily used bedding areas on the property and there is a huge creek crossing there as well where they come from the north fields headed to bed in the mornings. IMHO one of the best rut stands on the property but time will have to prove that I guess.

The stand that is on the north side of the creek closest to thewhite spot Buckeye picked is a good condition wooden ladder stand that trespassers built before I posted it in 2005. I haven't hunted it but have found stands of theirs in other locations that were good producers. It is on a good crossing for the stream and I may hunt it as an evening stand in early season next year to see what happens there.

The stand furthest northeast on the property just inside the woods off the field has never been hunted and was hung in summer 06'. I have glassed several bachelor groups of bucks in that little piece of field we own including one that looked nice from about 800 yards away. Lots of rubs in there and a nice little draw coming up out of the creek that funnels them into a staging areathere just by the stand. Wind should usually be right, but I have to hunt it I guess and see what happens there. Lots of oaks there too.

The stand furthest east on the south side of the creek has been called "the sweet spot". There is a major crossing there that looks like a cowpath plus it is VERY close to a bedding area that is polluted with lots of rubs that is so thick you can't see more than 10 yards unless you are on your hands and knees. It is young hemlocks. I only hunted this 2x including 1x evening sit on opening day in the evening back in 05' where I saw about 15 deer including a 2.5 year old buck. The second time I hunted it was a morningsit andI saw nothing.

The two stands in the furthest southeast corner of theproperty justnorth and south of the foodplot are awesome stands for killing does and I bet will produce a good buck someday. The one just north of the foodplot has produced tons of sightings 1.5-2.5 year old bucks and all sorts of doe family groups. APAJaws killed 2x does there this year and one morning had 4x different bucks (all 1.5-2.5) chasing does in front of him like something out of a movie. The deer move through this spot leaving the neighbors plots to the east on their way to the bedding area just to the west of the stand. This is an awesome producer, and an area Davidmil highlighted as well. During normal wind conditions it blows wind right off the side of the sidehill so they never pick you off or wind you there. This spot has been hunted quite a bit but no one has ever been winded or picked off there that we know. The other stand just south of this is coined the "Taj Mahal" where we have a permanent stand built in and where most of my game cam pics have been taken. They use this as staging to go into the neighbors field before dark as it is an oak flat there. They move through there all day long and this produces more deer sightings than any other stand on the property. No big buck sightings but a great doe killing stand and out of 30+ sits in the last 2x years someone has seen an antlered deer every time except for 2. This is my dads favorite napping spot and he hunts it hard so I dont sit there often at all.

I actually screwed up and didn't cut that patch out of the property line, the neighbor actually owns that andkilled a nontypical 17 point buck that grossed in the 160's back in 2003 right there with a rifle.

It is fun to hunt but we are still figuring it out and I don't have the time to put in to really learn it as fast as I want because it is a 4 hour road trip and you can't hunt Sundays. This is good because everything (except my dads Taj Mahal stand) is unpressured when I get there, but bad because I still don't have the bigger buckspatterned 100% even after 2x years. The neighbors w/ plots to the east practice QDMA and have produced 2x bucks of P&Y class in the last 5 years during rifle season, and I haveglassed deer during off season that are 120" and better. I have had a handful of encounters with good bucks too but haven't closed the deal yet. In reality I should have passed the 6 I shot this year but decided to take him because of how the hunt unfolded and how perfect the scenario was.

Any other thoughts are great........I appreciate the help.

Rick James

Yeah, I know this and really want to hunt the terrain stuff more. I do hunt the plot/field edges sometimes but I know when doing this I am primarily hunting does. Early and late season I hunt this stuff. I have learned the movement in those areas pretty well as of now, it is the terrain/land features in the timber that I am looking for advice on.

Thanks for the advice keep it coming!!

Germ

RickJames I understand why you hunt the field edges, here is why I do not unless....


I have2 field edge spot I hunt during the early season, but I climb up the river bank and into the tree. Both these spots are back from the bedding areas a bit. I have better spots for early season, but I do not want to tip a mature buck off that I am hunting him. If your goal is to shoot some doe's and do not care about shooting a mature buck then great.

If you want shoot a mature buck staying out of these spots and hunting observation stands can really help IMO come time of the rut. The buck will feel "safe" in your hunting area. Now once the rut starts all best are off, I hunt near my field edges, but like buckeye I like to be back in the woods a bit.

Just some food for thought