BigJ71

Well my trip down to my families propertyin southern Illinoiswas a complete bust,didn't even see a deer!

I think I need to move some stands but I wanted to hunt so I just sat in the ones already up. I could hear movement down below me (deep hollow) from one stand but I never saw what was making the noise. The other one....nothing, not a thing.

The only good thing is I have a pretty good idea of where tomove thestands. The problem is it's a 5hr drive one way andif I were to go down and move stands it would pretty much screw up the hunting for that particularweekend[:'(].

So, I think what I'll do is hunt up here for the next two weeks, then go down for the gun season and hopefully kill a doeon Friday so I can spend Saturday repositioning my stands. The good thing about the gun hunt (and I've done this pretty much every year) is that I can really get a good idea ofhow the deer are moving. Then fine tune my setups for the remaining bow season.

My gunstand is right on the edge of the fields in a positionwhereI cansee pretty farin three directions. I will be able to see where the deer come out and go into the thick timber. At that point I like to try and find there staging areas and trails to them. Then I set up my bow stands accordingly.

Hopefully I'll connect on a nice deer, I know up here (Northern Illinois) there are a lot of deer and I've seen many so far this year, it's just a matter of getting on a bigger buck. Like I said, I will be happy with anything over 100in and that's what I'm looking for.