We head up about an hour and 15 minutes early.They guys have their ATV's and I grab a ride up the hill with them.That gets me to my stand an hour early. I use it to put out scents, open up the windows, set everything up as to binocs, thermos, candy, calls, all within reach. You just don't want to disturb anything coming through during that first 15 minutes where you can actually see something, but it's still too dark to shoot. If something big was in your area and walks away, you'd like to be able to start calling him back so when it starts getting light enough, he'd been re-entering your domain, especially on opening day.