A month ago, during the first eight days of our Minnesota firearm deer hunting season, two of my three sons took four dominant breeding bucks (party hunting) on the public land where we have been hunting whitetails for thirty years, increasing our total of mature bucks taken there since 1990 to 105. That’s amazing buck hunting for four hunters. Being dominant breeding bucks, all were the largest of bucks in each of their separate, square-mile breeding ranges. Two were 10-pointers, one was a 9-pointer and one was an 8-pointer. All were taken via stand hunting—one from a new portable tree stand and three from ground level stands, using natural cover as blinds. Two were taken during the first two legal shooting hours of the day (our usual reward for getting up at 4AM daily), one midday and one during the final legal shooting hour of the day. Lures, baits, minerals and food plots were not used to take any of these bucks. Our deer numbers were at a historic low due to severe winters and year-round hunting by overabundant wolves, averaging about five per square mile, we often had sub-zero temperatures in the morning, the moon was bright morning and evening beginning on day four and our wolves were especially bothersome, making hunting more difficult. However, 2–4 inches of snow covered the ground (photo above), the first of the three two-week breeding periods of the whitetail rut as in progress and mobile stand hunting—moving to new stand sites near freshy made deer signs made by mature, unalarmed bucks every half day—contributed greatly to our hunting success. Three bucks were taken at stand sites never used before, located downwind or crosswind of trails or sites where older bucks were expected to appear (based on deer signs and a truthful knowledge of the whitetail rut learned via my 50 years of wild whitetail field bstudies). Stand sites never used before have always been our most productive for taking older bucks because approaching bucks then have no reason suspect a hunter is waiting in ambush there. All four were taken for different reasons. The 9-pointer was taken from a stand site that had been used one, sometimes two half-days per year for a decade or so to take an older buck almost every year until its effectiveness ended in 2016. Its effectiveness was restored last November by a new approach trail—a new series of connecting deer trails coursing through very dense cover from a different direction. Patience—waiting for the proper wind direction to approach and hunt at this ground level stand site—plus a doe in heat, made it easy to take the 9-pointer. Great preseason scouting, a doe in heat and great shooting accuracy contributed most to taking one of the 10-pointers. The discovery of very fresh tracks made by a mature buck while on the way to a known feeding area, a new ground level stand where the hunter was well-hidden by natural, unaltered cover, selected and put to use immediately after discovering those tracks and  another nearby doe in heat (revealed by blood spotted urine along the way), contributed to taking the other 10-pointer. The 8-pointer was soon taken in another area after 1) discovering doe urine spotted with blood (revealing the doe was in heat), 2) immediately taking a round-about route (well to the west, then downwind and then northeast) to avoid tainting the triangular area throughout which doe in heat pheromone was spreading southeast with airborne human scent and 3) soon selecting a new ground level stand site near the southwest side of that triangle, sitting crosswind to watch for a buck being lured northwest toward the urine and nearby doe. Again last November, my sons and I continued to prove moving to a new stand site every half-day to wherever a mature buck and other unsuspecting whitetails are active right now or were active minutes or hours earlier (as revealed by their fresh deer signs) is far more productive than stand hunting at one stand site day after day and year after year. This is a buck hunting method well worth learning.