Sometimes hunters do some crazy things when it comes to deer hunting, especially when it comes to stand location. Or stand better stated, when it comes to stand locations. Deer hunting success is a lot like good real estate: location, location, location! But sometimes as hunters we get overzealous and want to place hunting stands all over the place. It is always good to have options, but too many options can drive a hunter crazy.
I have a buddy who had a 600 acre property that his family owned and only he hunted. The place was less than an hour from his house and it held a good number of deer. Sounds like a total deer hunting dream, right? The only drawback was that he had set up 5 hunting stands and feeders and had multiple food plots. This would be okay if 4 or 5 people hunted the property, but he for the most part was the only guy deer hunting it every year.
He told me every time he went out he would debate which stand to hunt. He would go through this whole process of elimination in trying to determine which stand was best. Which feeder had the best bucks on game camera, which one had the most deer? Where would the deer be if he was deer hunting on the west end? How many deer would be at the feeders he could not see? It would be enough to drive me crazy!
Last year, he bumped into a neighbor one morning as he was heading home after an unsuccessful morning of deer hunting. Apparently, he had one stand that the neighbor could see from next door. The neighbor proceeded to described a “monster buck” that was around my buddy’s stand for about 45 minutes that morning. How the deer looked to be the biggest buck that he’d ever seen.
As you can imagine, this made my buddy sick. But when it comes to multiple stand locations, too many deer feeders or food plots spread out across the landscape can mean attracting deer to locations where you are not. From a deer management perspective, holding deer on the his property was good because there was always a lot of safe areas where deer, particularly mature bucks, could feel safe. However, too many stand locations made the deer hunting very difficult because he was hunting specific bucks.
In short, I would discourage hunters from putting up too many deer stands and feeders up on a deer hunting property. Not because the deer will suffer, but for your own sanity! A couple of hunting locations is nice to have, but I am a big believer in fewer stands and more feeders and food plots per location. There are many ways to set up a hunting property and each property and hunter is different, but I hope this helps you in your deer hunting endeavors and gives you a little insight into setting up deer stands.