Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Deer Stand Longevity

We have a club environment with say 15 members sharing 2,000 acres of Southern timber lands, woods, creek, sand roads (public and logging) and pretty much contiguous land. We have places that produce year after year but the deer are stand wise and seem to always be looking at them when they step out in a power line or road. Someone shoots a nice deer, that stand gets checked out a bunch.... doesn’t produce again.... overhunting.

We have some stands that have been in one spot for 20 plus years and the saying is, “that spot used to get good deer wonder why no one has got anything lately...”. If you go there and look around the trails go behind the stand location deer are bypassing it. Solution, climb 40 to 50 yards off the stand and trails, and you get a nice deer. Climb high. Tell everyone you shot out of the stand, they go there and don’t see anything.... go back and climb... ;-).

Our biggest disrupter is clear cutting of timber which causes us to reposition stands in surrounding areas.

OP was right on about old locations... we see a “new great spot” and then look around and usually find some old boards nailed to a hardwood or remnants of an old stand... everything has been hunted before...


It’s hunting and it’s fun!

I've hunted out of the same deer stand for over 20 years. The stand is 6 foot square and is 21ft high. I have plenty of deer tracks within a few feet of the stand every year. I've heard "stories" of hunters saying: Deer know where my stand is and avoid it. I find that to be hilarious.

Don

in 1974 me, my dad, brother and dads friend had to hunt a new area due to overnight snow fall keeping us off the mountain. we went to a spot we had hunted small game and on the way in we saw a big buck cross the road and go up a draw through a field and up the ridge. that afternoon i sat at the bottom of that draw and shot my first deer, a six point. through the years my brother used it and got many deer there. in 2008 when my boys were 12 we sat there and they both got their first deer there on the exact spot i got mine in 74. since then my sons have gotten several more there. unfortunately the area has gotten smaller as other parcels have been bought up and posted but this 20 or so acre pocket and the big old hemlock we have all sat under is still "old reliable". its just not as much fun to hunt since you really can't move much. due to terrain, i have no doubt that the deer have been using this draw for eons and will continue.

The best answer for “things changing “ has been covered. Food,activity, etc. I’ll throw in that your particular piece of land grows up and doesn’t afford the same protection and browse it once did. On the other end the ONLY runs that I have found that produce every year are migration runs. Those are about timing and no one will usually share the location of those spots.