Got out still hunting for the first "real" still hunt. Covered about 150 yds in about an hour an a half and was walking on grass and patches of snow that had been soaked down in a rain in previous days and were now frozen and a bit crunchy. But there were winds gusting at times so I only moved during the gusts. It was noisy, but not excessively so. At 150 yds I stopped cause the wind died down. So I leaned up against a small 6" diam tree (too small I was to find out). After 15 minutes I decided to try my grunt call set on young doe. About 10 minutes I hear a deer coming in, crunching along. I slowly turned, but then realized the deer was fairly close, maybe 40 or 50 yds away. This was heavy cover. The deer seemed to be trained on me the whole time - pretty sure it did not wind me as I was downwind for where it was and where it came from. At any rate, as I slowly tried to move, it spooked, snorted, and was off. That pretty much was the end of the hunt. Still, it was a great time of hunting. But I have a few questions.

1. Should a person sit or kneel close to the ground when they stop? In my case, if I had been near the ground behind a big tree, I would have probably gotten this deer.

2. Should a person use grunt calls at all? This seemed to allow the deer to quickly locate me.

3. Should a still hunter refrain from any type of scents? I was putting some of this down too, although in this case I do not think it was a factor.

4. Is about 100 yds/hour a reasonable rate of pace? And how slow should all movements be? I was trying to move very slow when I moved.

5. Any tips for heavy cover? This is often what I have for this type of hunting.

6. Do you always hunt straight into the wind?

7. I assume any conditions that allow you to move without detectible noise are acceptable for this type of hunting, right?

Thanks for any input you can provide.