Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting How long would you hunt an unproductive stand?

My stand is a folding chair and a pair of shooting sticks, chair weighs 2# sticks are my cane, rifle 7 1/2 # pt a couple of water bottles in my coat pockets with a candy bar and i'm ready to go if there's no Deer sign don't sit there and pray for rain! I can hunt any where depending on the wind, never have been a fan of box blinds and we have a bunch of them, i don't sit in a box blind unless the weather is terrible. Rio7

I have a tripod type stand on the edge of one field that's been historically good. Like, dead deer or opportunity for one every other day (on average) in the season for the past 25 years.

Outside of that - it's all climbing tree stands for mobility and/or what you have, a folding chair behind some cut balsams and a small bag with gear. We don't have a single "stand/blind" that has a roof or door or anything.

This is 100% accurate IMO.

I have 2 good friends that I hunt with. They sit the same spot year after year after year. No matter what. Maybe shoot a buck once every 4-5 years and it will be a fork. Why? it's easy to get to and there are 1000's of pics of deer every season. But they're all at night. They claim "one will come through in daylight." Yep, once every few yers lol.

They'll sit them rain or shine, south wind, north wind, east wind...don't matter.

Go scout now. It's perfect. The woods looks just like it did in November. You don't need snow. Drive your car around and look for edges and it doesn't have to be much of one either. You see one, get out and walk it. Hell, it can be 2 types of pines that make an edge. One thing I've been noticing now that I've had OnX for a few years and mark where I see sign...Deer like contours too. And it doesn't have to be much of one. If you're in a swamp and you have "ridge" that is 2 feet higher than the swamp, they'll run it. Find those, there will be sigh on them, book it.

Deer are herding animals.
If there aren't any deer where you are at, you won't see any.

How's that for a Yogi Berra-ism?

If you are hunting a morning stand and don't see anything by noon, definitely get up and start still hunting.

Help me out here?

That's why they're productive though. You don't dick it up.

I do love the big woods. SKane is spot on. There is nothing like getting a buck there. You've earned it, no matter the size. Deer numbers were way, way, down this season up there. I think I saw 7 during gun season, 3 were bucks.

If you don’t have fresh sign I wouldn’t hunt there. Simple as that.

Agreed about big woods deer. Those are the ones I remember the most and I've never taken anything near in size to what some of you fella's show, but man are they special.

Sometimes 75 yards is all it takes. I put in one stand the first year I was at the farm that truly sucked, but everything looked ideal. I had the right structure and the right sign. After zero encounters the first year, I moved about 100 yards up the hill and occupied a tree that had an old 2X4 nailed 10 feet up. It became my best treestand. I took the camp record from it. My last big buck from there was just 2 years ago. Last year, I nailed the best buck in a decade while he was standing 50 yards from the stand. I shot him at 200 yards from a nearby ground blind.

The one my son's have so much success from is only 75 yards from my old "Garbage Pit" stand. The latter was on a trail that cut across the base of a wooded peninsula. After the doe we named "Madge" put the curse on it, it was a no-go for 5 years. We moved the stand out to an island at the tip of the peninsula, and got good results again. The name, "Garbage Pit, comes from the fact that the previous owners dumped trash into a sinkhole near the tip of the peninsula. The sinkhole made a chokepoint for entering the woods. Now the deer travel between the peninsula and the island.

I went back and looked at the OPs original post. I didn't get the same conclusion as you. Besides, I've hunted the same 200 acre plot for 20-some seasons. I think about things in that way. Bottom line: pulling up stakes and moving to the next county, in my experience, has never been a necessity. Sometimes small changes bring big results.

My advice to the OP is to scout around a bit and try and figure out what, if anything has changed.

One big bugaboo for us has been the acorn crop. This year, the acorns dropped a good 2-4 weeks later than usual, probably due to the warm, dry weather this fall. The whole herd disappeared; they were munching acorns all night and never showing up during the day. For us, it is a temporary thing. We get this maybe every decade or so.

I'm always a little reluctant to go walking around during the gun season because invariably I'll jump something up and get it killed by some other hunter. The best stand sites that I've ever found were from snow tracking a big set of deer tracks and setting up a stand the next year somewhere along that route that gave me an advantage. Topography does funnel deer movement. I was talking with Greg Miller at a deer seminar and he told me that he has left hunting Price County because it was too big and too flat and the deer could go anywhere. Another thing I'd heard and already mentioned in this thread was that if you want to shoot a big buck, you need to hunt where one lives. I think that I've morphed into hunting like tzone's two buddies. We only get a 9 day gun season and opening day is sacred. The deer have to be there somewhere and they can't all be down wind. A stand site for me will take advantage of the prevailing north west wind, but I'd still probably hunt a good stand in a wrong wind. Back in my youth I'd hunt high enough in a tree that it didn't seem to matter much.

Shaman, I think that a minor move should be in order. Last season hunting the only decently large stand of regenerating poplar trees within miles, I got the feeling that it was like being in the right church, just the wrong pew. The only shot that I heard close that made for coyote, crow and raven gut pile scavenger noise was on the other side of that stand of poplar. That stuff grows thick and visibility is pretty limited, but I'd read that it will hold like 13 deer per square mile. Way more than that mature maple.

If I sit a place twice and don't see any deer there I am done unless there is fresh sign they are using the area. We have a high population density where I hunt though.

Walking around aimlessly through the woods will push deer to them, yep. Still hunting where you have scouted and know there is sign, with the wind in your favor, it hunting.

Those deer leave sign when there isn't snow too.

Jeff, tzone is leading you to water here – now, whether you choose to drink......

Yup, that's why I read here. Long ago I decided that I was too clumsy and impatient to still hunt or try to "Benoit" one. When I hunted the NW part of the state where tzone hunts, the woods were bigger and the deer were less pressured. It was a case of waiting for a big enough buck to shoot. Mid week was just as good as opening day because there weren't any hunters and the deer were moving naturally. NE, WI. isn't that same way. There they get rousted by small game hunters, bow hunters, ATV riders, snowmobiles, bear hunters and berry pickers. After opening weekend the deer are border line paranoid. Lots of the time you see one because someone bumped it into you. Trophy hunting in that area has turned into brown is down if it has legal antlers. I've got to do the work to find a seam when I hunt there where guys don't or won't go. In years past that involved boots on the ground, scouting, packing in and camping, crossing water, climbing higher and going in farther. Being gray around the muzzle into senior class like lots of the forum guys here, has landed me into that stage when those deer and shooting stuff isn't quite as attractive as it once was.

If one knows there’s a buck in the area the longer on a stand improves the odds of seeing it.
I don’t do a lot,of moving around, not a lot of land.

Been wanting a shack/stand our property for years, never have been able
to figure out a place that's worth the time/effort/money.

Partly due to trying to figure out that one permanent site, partly
because i don't like stand hunting.

It's boring, confining, and isn't hunting.
Hunting is a verb, implying action.

Being in a stand is sitting or standing, looking, maybe shootingsomething that
walks by. Oh, and staying awake. Something I struggle with on a stand.

Found out Dad wants a shack, a mobile one is limited for us so it's gotta be permanent. S-I-L to be and I are gonna build him one.
Probably waste of our time, he can't walk in anymore and refuses to drive his stupid show truck where a leaf might fall on it. Only hunting if one of us drives out truck in, and we both are work limited. Oh well, we will do our part. How much he gets to use it is up tohim.

I have hunted Price co. Wis for 35 gun seasons and it is the hardest place I ever hunted deer. I saw a buck this gun season and before that was 2009. It took 14 gun seasons to see a buck. As for hunting the big woods, I just hunt along the S. Fork Flambeau River cause I have river frontage. There is more sign along the river , perhaps cause it is one of the only places with a ridge . There is a trail along the river that runs for miles. Other than that , the trails are so faint that you can hardly tell they are there and very hard to hunt deer in wolf country cause deer dont follow trails much cause if they follow trails, wolves pick up the pattern . As for hunting a stand in the big woods, I hunt it a few times a year and that is it . They are just too remote to put up with much human scent.

I feel for the cheesehead brethren in NE Wisconsin. I have hunted all around the Crivitz area starting in the early 2000s until about 2015 or so. We used to hunt around Thunder Mountain, Nicolet NF, and Governor Thompson State Park when it first opened. We used to have a blast and were quite successful, but each year it kept getting worse and worse. The last year I hunted up there, I saw my first deer on Wednesday of the gun season? I’d love to get out there again some day as I truly love the people, the land and having thanksgiving dinner in a supper club!

Windfall, have you ever thought about an out of state trip? There’s some great opportunities south of border here in FIB territory if you can flip the cost of a tag? We have friends that come hunt public from Wisconsin and do well.

To answer your original question, my hunting time is way to valuable to waste and I try to avoid unproductive spots before I even sit in them! I have been on a public land kick lately and basically I am scouting during bow season and when gun season comes, I put it all together and set myself up for an opportunity on a mature Buck. So far, it’s worked really well.

Matt