I don't think a deer seeing you in a stand will become accustomed to your presence and not think of you as a threat. If you're worried about that, you could just give it a nasty-sounding growl to make sure he knows you mean him harm.

Actually, it was a bit of both. In jest 'cause I know no-one would do it just to make their quarry harder to kill in the following seasons, but I think the logic works. I'm kinda thinking that the biggest reason to let bucks go is so they get bigger, not so they get smarter.

Let's face it, if they had a choice between going after a 190" 5-year-old typical whose smarts scored 6/10, and an 8-year-old non-typical scoring 110" with some broken off tines but whose smarts scored 10/10, most hunters would pursue the younger, less savvy 190" buck. Point being, no matter what people say, it ain't all about the challenge. Though, I do think that there would be a very, very small percentage of hunters that would see and pass the 190" and go after the older boy (let's say it was one they'd been after for years, and they only had one buck tag).

I like that idea. Maybe add some brown-striped underwear in case you have gas while you're up in the stand.