During the more than three-quarters of a century I’ve hunted whitetails, always hoping or intending to take a buck 3-1/2 years of age or older, I’ve been forced to change the way I hunt several times. The reason was, mature whitetails, especially older bucks, have been amazingly adaptable to any new hunting method or lure us American deer hunters came up during all those years. Whereas it usually took a decade or so for an overall deer populations to become notably more difficult to hunt after leaf numbers of hunters in the area began using something new such as tree stands, buck lures or various calls, for example, individual bucks 3-1/2 years of age or older typically became impossible to fool again after surviving only one encounter with a hunter using them. In time, my hunting-related studies proved the this was also true of stand sites. A well-hidden stand with a well-hidden approach trail used by a silent and well-hidden stand hunter might fool an older buck more than once, but no stand site is long immune from discovery by noses of experienced whitetails that happen to be downwind. Once discovered, however, wherever all hunters are stand hunters, mature bucks (and does) do not normally abandon their ranges, only the area within 100 yards or more of discovered stand sites (the size of the area dependent on surrounding density of cover), thereafter living normal lives elsewhere within their ranges.

In time it became obvious to my three sons and I that a stand site never used before—within easy shooting distance downwind or crosswind of very fresh deer signs made by an unalarmed buck—provides the very best odds for taking a mature buck (or any other deer for that matter). As long as a new stand site has not been made obvious by human destruction, construction, intense trail scents or rapid motions or sounds made by the stand hunter, a buck of any age will have no reason to initially avoid it, unless the buck is directly downwind. 

The trouble is, if your stand is located in a portion of a mature buck’s home/breeding range where it is located right now or where it was located a short time earlier (where your stand should be, made possible by hunting only near fresh deer signs made by an unsuspecting buck), a newly used stand site is only likely to remain undiscovered by that the buck for a few minutes to a few hours after a hunter begins using it—the period during which you are either most likely to take that buck or that buck is most likely to identify you and begin avoiding you there, with or without you knowing it. Logically, then, to keep your odds favorable for taking a mature buck, you should switch to a new (unused) stand site 100 yards or more away downwind or crosswind of fresh deer signs made by a mature buck every day or half day. To avoid wasting time at stand sites unknowingly discovered by our antlered quarries, my sons and I change stand sites (elevated stands and ground level stands) every half day. This more than anything has enabled the four of us Hunti#us to take our usual self-imposed limit of four mature bucks per year practically every year since 1990.