I love to stand hunt, but have found that tactic generally unproductive in western MT. I believe the basic equation comes down to how much channelization (?funnelization, is that a word) a piece of country has going for it. In good funnel country, like eastern MT farm land with limited cover, a guy really should take a stand and stick to it all day. A good funnel stands out like a sore thumb and will produce deer sightings by the score. But over here, where cover is almost unlimited and the deer feed pretty much anywhere because there is no agriculture to draw them in, finding a "paying" stand site is next to impossible.
So, I have resorted to still hunting instead.

In still hunting, I try to think of it as "stand hunting on the move". In other words, I'm not covering much ground, anywhere from 50-200 yards/hour depending on ground conditions. I spend most of my time standing and watching in between steps. Even so, my hunting logs show that still hunting in this part of the state, even slowly, increases my deer sightings about 5-fold over stand hunting. Basically, I try to hunt along a likely travel route, or hunt perpendiculary across several parallel travel routs.

I like talking about this type of hunting, because this kind of "big woods" whitetail hunting like we do in eastern WA, northern ID, and northwestern MT gets short shrift in the hunting mags. They're almost all geared toward leased farmland in the corn belt.