Originally Posted by
bigcountry
Well, I have killed deer in flatwoods, penelton, grant county, and wayne county, and can't say I could ever blame my range finder for high shots.
Grew up in Mingo county, you will find mostly in WV, its silly
I live in Flatwoods but I do not hunt here. I grew up in Wyoming County. I do most all of my deer hunting in Wyoming County and a little bit of hunting in Boone County.
wvnimrod said,
IMO in a normal treestand setup 20-25ft you would have to be on such of an incline for the angle compensation to be useful that you would have to start thinking about weather you will be able to make a good clean shot!
OK, so your normal set up is 20-25 feet high. My normal set up is 25-30 feet high, the reason that angle compensation is so important when hunting steep terrain is that the deer can very easily be 50-60 feet or even more below the base of the tree you are hunting in. I do not know anyone that puts their treestand 90 feet up a tree but I do know that several of my setups are exactly like this: 30 feet up a tree with the deer trail being 60 feet below the base of the tree. This is exactly the same as being 90 feet up a tree.
As far as a good clean shot. The angle would be no different than being 25' up a tree and shooting 12 yards. I also practice year round and always shoot from each treestand setup before hunting it.
I think that if you have to hunt that much of an incline and I know some do, that a groundblind setup would be a better choice,and would give you less of an angle to the animal
Its kind of hard to explain but when your hunting really steep terrain a ground blind is just not a option because its way to steep to set one up. Typically if you can find a old skid road or something crossing the steep sections that is exactly where the deer travel so you cannot set up a blind there you must go up the mountain and set your treestand on the steep section and them trim out a couple of shooting lanes. The hunting in these areas is very hard and requires a lot of extra work but the big bucks make it all worth while.
I mean if your already on an incline why compound the situation by climbing 20ft higher?
If you are trying to set your stand so that you are watching two trails one uphill from you and the other one down hill from you. You must set your stand high otherwise the trail uphill from you will be at eye level to the deer and they will be looking right at you at very close range.
I will post below a typical situation I run into when hunting steep mountains.