Thanks guys, the help is appreciated. Anyone else please feel free to continue providing feedback.
Let me do this with 2x photos in seperate posts that will let me show more detail.
[ul][*]Large pink dots are current stand locations[*]Large yellow dots are spots trimmed to put up a ground blind when the wind is right[*]Small red dots are apple trees[*]Green dots are foodplots that have different seed types and produce forage summer/fall/winter[*]Blue outlined areas are known bedding areas[*]Orange is property line[*]Light blue is an old logging/access road that runs the bottom of that sidehill[/ul]
Keep in mind the wind is almost always blowing towards northeast. It will occasionally in the evenings switch directions and blow south/southwest.
The two southernmost stand locations I put up with intentions of hunting only evenings during early season. We have glassed a LOT of big bucks during late summer including one real slammer I saw last year that would have gone 130 or so. The yellow ground blind location near them APAJaws and I had several encounters with a nice 110" 7 pointer during opening week this year. None of these deer were killed this year that I know of. They stop coming into this with frequency after the first 2x weeks or so but can almost always be spotted in there after dark with a spotlight. They bed VERY close to the field edge here and you have to be careful sneaking in there. Last year and this year we did see does that were being chased up into the open field by mature bucks on 3x occasions all between 11am and 2pm. I will probablydo a couple mid day hunts next year during the first full week in November out of the stand in the point just south of that foodplot on the southwest corner.
The two stands north of the foodplot on the northwest of this pic are fantastic doe killing evening stands all year round, but you can't hunt them much because the wind is rarely right there. During late season they bed right on the edge. I had an encounter there with a pair of very mature does this last weekend where they caught me facing the wrong way and unfortunately my stand is in a tree with no cover in late season, they milled around for about 1/2 an hour before one got downwind of me out in the foodplot and blew my set before I could get situated for a shot. That will get moved this next spring into a tree with better cover for sure. The bottom of that plot is turnips and they love them. The rest it MO Biologic Maximum and next year there will be a strip of clover for early season too. This northwest patch was never used much by deer until this year when we put in the foodplot, now there are 2x family groups of does that live in there consistently but we still have only seen a handful of yearling bucks in there and not much buck sign. Hopefully next year that will change with a second year of good foodplots in there.......if the does are there the bucks will be too. That spot that looks like a pond on the northwest side is actually a gravel pit, not a pond.
You can see 2x stands in the very northeast side of this pic. They are both some real producers for deer sightings. Deer bed on that sidehill in the blue outlined area and in a thicket of 25 year old swampy hemlocks that is just north of that logging road.There is LOTS of buck sign on the bottom in there north of the logging roadin that hemlock patch. You can clearly see the edge on the north side of that hemlock patch just south of the stand location that is furthest northeast here. Several pretty good 100" or so 2.5 year olds were sighted from both of the stands in the northeast cornerof the pic this year and last and there are rubs on trees that are honestly 12" in diameter in those hemlocks. I hunt the thick stuff hard in there but have yet to close the deal on something. Last year my father sighted a buck coming out of that access road crossing the main road on the very last day of late season that he claims was in excess of 140" as a 10 pointer. I believe him because of the sign in there.......tracks on that logging road are sometimes in reality over 4" in length and that logging road is polluted with scrapes.
On to the next pic in another post............feel free to comment on this guys on things you would change or do differently.
