RE: How early do you get in your stand
I go in when I feel like it. I don't worry about noise since any deer I spook will be replaced by the stragglers who come in after the spooky hard to target early crowd. I'm a meat only hunter, but I've noticed that there are plenty of trophy class bucks that stay out to the last minute to maximize their chance of breeding. Most trophy class deer are still young enough to make mistakes, only the very wary bucks breed at night exclusively, andyou will rarely see them after dawn so I don't concern myself with them since you will almost never see them. The hunter who breaks the current record should be viewed with a jaundiced eye since he or she will almost certainly have poached their trophy in some way, deer in that class are almost exclusively nocturnal.