Early in my bowhunting days (we’re talking 8th and 9th grade here), my cousins and I had a ritual. The week, or sometimes two weeks, before the opening day of bow season, we would head to our family camp, walk the ridges and flats around the property, and determine where our most likely spot would be for dropping a deer. Typically, that meant finding an oak tree that was shedding acorns with evidence that deer were feeding under it. Then we would find a nearby tree where we could pile some brush and downed limbs around it and make a blind.
That was it. We couldn’t afford tree stands, so a good ground blind had to do. We would cut some fresh limbs that still had their leaves on and weave these through the bigger branches to fill out the natural screen and hope that they’d still be there when the big day arrived.
Sometimes it worked. Quite often it didn’t. When it did, it was usually pure luck. We paid no attention to the prevailing winds, and the steep, mountainous terrain didn’t present a whole lot of options regarding stand placement. Deer that did saunter by usually knew right off that something was wrong. It was only later that I understood just how keenly aware deer are to changes in their environment. A new blind was a source of curiosity and caution to them. They approached warily, with all senses tuned to my location.
The lesson learned and practiced in the ensuing years was to get my stand placement lined out well in advance of the season opener. Now, I make sure to have my stands set up at least four to six weeks ahead of time. As I write this, our archery season begins in seven weeks, so I’ll be setting up my stands this weekend.
And you should be doing the same. Here are some strategies that will help you work up an optimal bow stand this season.
Have Multiple Stand Options
Setting up a blind or tree stand a month or longer before season has one key advantage — it gives resident deer time to get used to it and ultimately ignore it completely by the time you are ready to hunt. Doing so, however, has potential disadvantages that you can overcome.

The early season is a time of transition for deer as they key in on changing food sources. One week may see a particular oak pumping out acorns that the deer are feeding heavily on; the next week, that oak may be abandoned for another tree a couple hundred yards away. Deer move with the food, so pinpointing a hot spot in late August or early September may do you no good the second week of October.
There’s one way around this is experience. If you’ve seriously hunted an area for at least a few seasons, you probably have identified several good food sources that deer inevitably zero in on every year. Having two or three stands established near these locations will give you options. If Location A is mostly done producing any mast, and Location C has yet to produce mast, then Location B may be where the deer are hanging out to feed. When that spot dries up, then it’s on to Location C when its mast starts to drop.
This is one of the reasons I always favor ground blinds. It often is not financially or logistically feasible to hang three or four tree stands at a time, but ground blinds simply require some sweat equity. Build a few near the likely feeding spots and you’ll always have a place to hunt that should generate some activity.
One way to help gin up some excitement when you’re hunting food sources like this is to deploy some sort of food scent. For hardwood stands in the early season, I use liberal applications of food cover scent around my blind, such as Scent Storm Acorn or Scent Storm Apple, if I set up near the old apple tree behind the house. Although these are primarily intended for use as a cover scent and to help calm deer, I like to use them as a subtle draw for passing deer. What I don’t do is use these food scents when they would be incompatible with the environment. For example, I wouldn’t use an apple scent if I were hunting in a pine thicket. That may draw too much of the wrong attention my way.
Observe the Travel Routes
We already mentioned that deer change their patterns to follow the prevailing food sources. During the early season, these food sources are usually very specific xe2x80x94 an oak, cherry, apple, beech, or other soft or hard mast tree. While deer will go out of their way to capitalize on these sources, in general, deer still tend to follow established patterns.
Perennial food sources like open grass and agriculture fields, for instance, often continue to receive attention, even if an oak tree is pumping out acorns like a popcorn machine. Year-round food sources and bedding areas usually mean well-worn travel paths between the two. This makes travel routes optimal, safe-bet locations for early season stand placement — especially if you want to establish your stand early so that deer will get used to it.

The challenge of setting up along travel routes is getting deer to stop where you want them to so you can take a clean shot. Since deer are usually on a mission (heading to their feeding or bedding areas) when cruising a travel route, you’ll need something to give them pause. Here is where strategic placement of a curiosity scent, such as Buck-Nip or the aforementioned food scents can help. Apply it to vegetation, on the ground, or to a hanging wick where you want a cruising deer to stop before you get in your stand for the morning or evening hunt.
Before we leave the travel route discussion, remember one thing … the evening travel route to long-established feeding areas (e.g. fields, open grass, etc.) are the most predictable. Figure out how those deer you see feeding in the fields late in the evening are getting there and you’ve found an ideal place to set up your stand, even if hunting season is a month away.
Mind the Winds
While weather patterns can be unpredictable, most every location has a prevailing wind direction, such as the west or northwest. That may get twisted up if you hunt in mountainous areas or bowls, but for the most part, there is a certain regularity with wind direction. Naturally, you always want to try to set up on the downwind side of where you expect the deer to be to reduce the possibility of them smelling you, so check the wind direction at your chosen site and set up accordingly.
You also need to be aware of how deer will approach your site, and here is where a lot of hunters mess up. If, for instance, you make your stand dead downwind of a feeding location, but the deer tend to approach that location from behind you, then you’ve just put yourself directly in the scent stream, and you’ll get busted almost every time. The best bet in this situation is to place your stand off to the side of the wind stream and out as far as you are comfortable shooting — say, 30 yards or so.
Scent Management … Always
Regardless of stand placement and wind direction, the shifting nature of breezes make it almost impossible to completely avoid deer getting a whiff from your location. This is why scent management can be the make or break difference to a successful hunt, especially early in the season when temperatures are still warm (or downright hot) and we’re doing a lot of perspiring.
Here are our recommended steps to keep alarming human scent in check:
1) Start by using unscented personal care products before each hunt. For one-stop convenience, something along the lines of the Scent Killer Gold Personal Care Kit covers all the needs, from body wash and shampoo to hair conditioner and antiperspirant/deodorant. Aside from having everything we need for the shower, the kit also includes a bottle of Scent Killer Gold odor-eliminating spray for our clothing and Field Wipes. The latter is especially welcome during warm weather. We can toss these in our daypack and use them to wipe away sweat and prevent bacterial odor from developing over the course of the day.
2) Spray your clothing, boots and any other gear that holds scent with a scent eliminator before you hit the woods. In the early season, we like Scent Killer Gold’s Autumn Formula because, at least to our noses, the woods have a stronger aroma in warmer weather, so it probably doesn’t hurt to try and blend in with that same smell.
3) Use cover scents. Deer have an incredibly sensitive sense of smell, as we all know, and it’s impossible for us to eliminate all odors from ourselves and our equipment. This is why we recommend the use of cover scents, such as the acorn and apple Scent Storm products mentioned earlier. While these can serve as an attractant, they can also minimize the impact of your scent.

In that same vein, masking scents like Coon Urine or Red Fox Urine also work to obfuscate human odor in an area. These are natural scents that deer are used to (assuming racoons and foxes are common in your hunting area), so they tend to have a calming effect on whitetails in some situations.
4) Finally, it doesn’t hurt to start using deer scent this early in the game. Deer urine that is not infused with sex hormones (that comes later in the season), such as Select Doe Urine or Golden Doe, can also help diffuse any odors you may be presenting and keep deer calm while you prepare for the shot. Dosing two or three wicks with deer urine and setting them around the periphery of your stand location is one successful approach we’ve used over the years.
Although opening day may seem a way off when you’re still wearing shorts and sweating behind a lawnmower, now is the time to start your stand preparations. The resident deer will have time to become used to any modifications you make in their home range and they won’t be as wary when it’s time to get in your stand.
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