The Deer & Deer Hunting Forum died before I could get any serious answers, so I'll throw this out here. I have an experiment in mind; I need your help.
The experiment involves taking a bottle of water out to the stand and pouring it in a way that simulates someone whizzing off the stand. I'd like some folks to try it and get back to me on the results. We can discuss the particulars. I'm just looking for some willing volunteers.
See, here's the thing. This all starts about 2006. My #3 son was still pretty small, and I was just getting him to where he could sit with me in a buddy stand. Lil Angus gets to about 0900 and he's got to whizz. I'm thinking about the hassle of getting him unhooked and down the ladder and then back up, and I finally tell him that it's okay to whizz off the stand. What the heck! He achieves this feat and sits back down and within short order, we're swimming in deer. This was early muzzleloader season. I wasn't going to bust a cap on anything that did not have serious rackage. What we got were all doe and a small buck. All told, in the next hour, we must have seen ten deer.
That got me to thinking. Whenever I'd been inclined to attend to matters out in the woods, I've frequently had close encounters with deer. #1? #2? Yes. Both. For a while there, anytime I let fly in the woods, I seemed to have an audience. This goes back nearly 40 years. Over the decades, the number of incidents have mounted up. I have opined that deer are like inquisitive 3 yr olds. They are curious about how we do it. I've popped a squat in the woods and stood up to see a big buck eyeing me. I've shot deer after situations like this. Why not after a whizz off a stand?
The episode in 2006 got me to thinking. Also about this time, middle age started to set in, and well. . . let's say the issue became more pressing as time wore on. I'm now 62, and a sit in one of my ladder stands now has to include one or more experiments. What I can tell you is that a preponderance of the sessions result in a deer sighting within a few minutes. I hunt stands mostly in oak/hickory groves so I suppose it could be that they hear it hitting the leaves and think its acorns.
Years ago I experimented with pitching acorns out of a stand. That never seemed to work.
So now I'm wondering: is it the sound or something else that attracts them? That's why I need y'all's help.
Take a bottle. Fill it with clean water. Dribble about 16 oz off the side of the stand, kind of like you're whizzing, and let me know what happens.
