quik, you probably know it was taken at my buddies camp in Jefferson county...the stand is actually at the 30 or so yards off the bottom of the hillside on a flat before it drops to the creek bottom. buddy says its always been an evening stand for him...he tagged his opening day and said i could goto camp with him that weekend and hunt. i saw a nice one opening day in my honey hole and wanted to give it a 2 week rest and wait for a little colder weather to hunt it again, so i said sure i'll go....friday evening i rattled in a neat looking 4pt up on the ridge farther down the ridge...that morning i had him walk me to his famous hemlock stand...

really neat area...

shot him just to the left of the young hardwood tree in the middle of the blurry pic(taken right after i watched him fall)


he came out of the hemlocks to the right there...buddy says they bed in the "spoil piles" that are in the direction he came from...real thick nasty bottom/small mining ponds and such...


heres a view of the stand....only pic i didnt have for my collection..took it in flintlock season when we were up grouse hunting. took it from where the buck was standing when i shot him..



i know he got 1 bow kill from that stand one evening a year or 2 ago...and a couple rifle bucks from that stand...the hillside is up to the left of that pic...active scrape was up to the left as well...heard a buck working the scrape that morning before i shot mine..caught a glimpse of it before it disappeared into the hemlocks right where mine fell...another 1.5yo..couldnt count points..snuck in behind me. the stand is on a cherry i believe..and the hemlock grows REALLLLY close to the cherry..top of the hemlock is gone, but its a pretty wide tree...viewing from the stand can be tough...1 deer busted us walking in that morning, had another bust me on stand...then saw that first buck, then shot mine a half hour later...when he went on his death run a bigger bodied deer took off that i never saw...awesome morning...awesome spot....awesome deer....for being 10/12 and 10/13 they responded to calling really well. they go unpressured till rifle season practically...couple early doe hunters on the other side of the mountain..but thats about it...and, yearly there are a few bigguns known to haunt the area...theyve killed a couple in rifle season that were GOOD bucks...exspecially for "mountain bucks"

better believe i will be there this year if i dont tag out...probably go up that same weekend again this year, then if i dont tag out go up 2 weeks after that towards the end of october...they aughta be really heating up around that time..

as you can see in the pictures, its kind of the edge of the hemlocks meeting the hardwoods...i think thats key as to why its a hot spot...as well as the oaks and cherrys...kicking myself...i forgot to locate that scrape location in the winter when we were up there...i like the area but dont know if i like the restricted view from that stand...but i dont know if theres a better stand location...those hemlocks block alot of ground reguardless really...and i DO like the fact that they have to be 10+yds away to get a shot at them..pretty much all the shooting is 10-25yds..mine was 21 or 22yds...loved that shot