There is not a stand hunter in America who can’t wait to return to a stand site where he or she took or saw a mature buck last year, or the year before or the year before that. I do it myself, even though my many years of hunting related studies have taught me there is a better, more sure way to take another mature buck.

 The most productive buck stand site provides great downwind or crosswind silhouette-hiding cover for the hunter, means of getting there without being positively identified by nearby whitetails and fresh nearby tracks and/or droppings or a freshly made or renewed ground scrape made by a mature buck. Nonetheless, if it is located where mature bucks living in the surrounding square mile have discovered a hunter stand hunting one or more times, typically happening without the hunter realizing it during the first 1-30 hours of stand hunting there each year, the odds of thereafter taking a mature buck at that site won’t be particularly favorable.

There is a reason. Mature whitetail bucks and does have excellent memories. Wherever you have hunted two or more years, all mature deer (not including a few possible mature newcomers and lone fawns or yearlings) will remember what you smell like, look like and sound like (including your unique footsteps) from hunting season to hunting season. They’ll even remember the trails and stand sites you commonly frequented, making it easy for them to avoid you right from the outset of a subsequent hunting season, doing the things that enabled them to survive past hunting seasons.

 The best way to overcome this mature-buck-hunting handicap is use a new (never used before) stand site often during a hunting season, each at least 100 yards away from any previously used stand site. Catch big bucks by surprise at stand sites where they have never discovered you before. They have no defense for this. As long as each new stand site has all of the above characteristics, each time you move your odds of taking a mature buck will again be usually favorable, but remember, only for a short time, not day after day for an entire hunting season or year after year. Older bucks are too smart to fall victim to that.

At age ten (1945) I asked my uncle Jack how to hunt a big buck. “You have to be at the right place at the right time,” he said. Though confusing at first, early in my later whitetail studies I discovered this was a very good answer no matter what class of whitetail you wish to take.

It’s simple. The “right place” is a trail or site being used by a big buck (or other deer) during any day of a hunting season, which will very likely be same trail, site or vicinity the deer will pass through or spend time in during the next three whitetail feeding periods—unless alarmed by a hunter, including you, in the vicinity meanwhile. The right place” will be made evident by very fresh tracks and/or droppings of a walking deer (differing sizes of tracks and droppings reveal classes of deer that made them).

 The “right time” is simple too. Whitetails are most active (during hours they can be hunted), doing almost everything they do in addition to feeding and drinking water, in the morning between first light and ten AM and in the evening between two hours before sunset until dark. If you know how various factors such as differing weather and the five phases of the rut alter these hours, you can narrow it down further.

 The problem is, how can you get close enough to the right spot at the right time for an easy shot before the deer there realizes you are approaching and sneaks away unseen and unheard or bounds noisily away with all possible speed, thereafter avoiding the site? This is the part of deer hunting that requires knowledge of whitetail habits and behavior during hunting seasons, special (wolf-like) hunting skills afoot, alertness, patience and the ability to make it very difficult for nearby whitetails to discover and identify you via airborne and trail  scents, sounds characteristic of hunting humans, motions and your unique human silhouette. Sometimes you get lucky, but over the long run you generally get what you earn via your application of your level of knowlwedge and skills in whitetail hunting.

Get a big buck this year, next year too and practically year after that using one of Dr. Ken Nordberg’s six new, mature-buck-effective hunting methods. Learn how in his new Whitetail Hunters Almanac, 10^th Edition. To review and order this remarkable 518 page, 8” x 10” hunting manual with 400 instructive photos and diagrams, based on 55 years of unique, hunting-related studies of wild whitetails over much of America, go to www.drnordbergondeerhunting.com and click on “store” today for quick delivery.

The public land in which my three sons and I hunt mature bucks only is no buck hunting paradise. Most of it is a rugged 1-3 mile hike on foot from the nearest road. Since they were declared “endangered” nearly fifty years ago, one of America’s largest population of gray wolves has been eating venison (and moose) there year around (3 of 4 fawns annually). American Natives have also been hunting deer there 24/7 four months annually without limit for many years. Long and severe winters with deep snows have greatly reduced deer numbers there several times. Since 1999. dee numbers there have never exceeded 6–11 per square mile in November. As might be imagined, mature whitetails that survive there are very difficult to hunt. We do not take antlerless deer (and rarely yearling bucks) to help maintain and restore overall deer numbers. We thus only hunt the most elusive of whitetails anywhere, bucks 3-1/2 to 6-1/2 (0ne rare 7-1/2) years of age (we do take some 2-1/2 year-olds late in hunting seasons). My long highly regarded 55 years of year-round, scientific, hunting-related research with wild deer over much of America and my subsequent development of six new fair chase, mature-buck-effective hunting methods enabled my three sons and I to take 98 mature bucks in this area (four bucks being our annual, self-limited quota) since 1990. That’s great buck hunting under the most challenging of circumstances. My latest Whitetail Hunters Almanac, 10^th Edition explains in detail exactly how we do it. Check out this revolutionary new book about whitetails and whitetail hunting and how to receive an autographed copy of your own along with a valuable free bonus on my website: www.drnordbergondeerhunting.com. You will be forever glad you did.

For about 30 years I insisted it was best to approach a stand site from downwind and sit downwind of a whitetail feeding area. In the morning it seemed most logical because the deer I expected to see there would already be feeding, generally beginning shortly after 4 AM. They thus wouldn’t be able to smell me approaching or while sitting at my stand site. After years of noting the odds of seeing deer in the evening in a feeding area I had hunted in the morning were much poorer, it finally occurred to me why. Mature whitetails (whitetails that have survived two or more hunting seasons) almost always approach a feeding area (or bedding area) from downwind to avoid walking into a hunter’s ambush.

Most long-used feeding areas are ringed by a deer trail 5-15 yards back in forest cover, used by whitetails using their eyes, ears and noses to search from along the downwind side for predators or hunters hidden in the peripheries before exposing themselves in the feeding area. If you are stand hunting along the downwind side in the evening, it is almost certain approaching whitetails will identify you three ways: 1) by your airborne scents spreading widely downwind from your stand (whether elevated or ground level and whether using odor suppressors of any kind), 2) by your fresh trial scents (detectable by whitetails four days or longer unless it rains or snow meanwhile) and by your dark silhouette framed against the bright open sky over the feeding area.

Especially when stand hunting adjacent to a feeding area you plan to hunt more than once, it is therefore best to sit crosswind, morning and evening. To ensure, your widening, triangular-shaped scent vector does not spread downwind into the feeding area, sit where the wind is blowing at an angle toward your upwind cheek rather side of your head. Whether stand hunting at ground level or up in a tree, also sit 10-20 yards back from the edge of a feeding area where well hidden by forest cover. Because wind directions are changeable, be prepared to use two or more stand sites appropriate for different wind directions most common during your hunting season. Also use approach tails well away from edges of feeding areas so you will be less easily heard or seen by feeding deer while heading to your stand site, morning or afternoon.