This doesn't surprise me.

All I have to do to prove this in my mind is......think about ALL the times I've had deer come from a TOTALLY (say...180deg.) different direction than where I thought they were going to come. What good does it do to set up "playing the wind"....when the deer don't cooperate?

I'll play it to an extent......but I won't get down and move if it shifts. I'll take my chances being 20' up and as clean as I can be.

Kudos to you guys who REALLY do this (move).

I agree I think hunters go WAY overboard about trying to become scent-free. I believe in rubber boots and maybe some scent-away spray, but if you climb 20-30 ft you wouldnt have to worry about your scent. Forget all those suits, the quote "A sucker is born every minute" comes to mind about them. I NEVER worry about the wind in picking my stand, and always kill good bucks every year. I just hate to see hunters make such a big deal about the wind unless you are stalking or on the ground.

To me wind is very important, especially from a tree. Eventually your scent hits the ground some distance away from your stand. I've seen this first hand. I have a stand where I'm 28' off the ground. I expected the deer to be coming from the west and had a west wind. Well, the deer came from the east, down wind from me in an open field (picked beans). They picked me off from 200 yds. One more positive reinforcement to not hunt an iffy wind. I will only hunt a stand if the wind if perfect for the stand. Don't kid yourselves that by being high in the stand that the deer won't notice you. This only works if the deer are too close to you that the wind blows over them.

Greg I have seen the same thing . I have a stand about fifteen yards inside a field edge,from this stand I can see across this field and I have seen deer spook after the wind shifts.
And rattling has also proven how good a bucks nose is. I will never rattle from a stand that a buck can circle down wind to approach .
To ignore the wind is a grievous error.

Nobody's saying "ignore the wind".Admittedly....I've only been hunting whitetails for the better part of two seasons.....but I've learned afew things:

1) Deer are skittish by nature
2) I can never tell what makes a deer calm one minute and alert the next
3) I know I can't do this from 200 yds away....with something I can't see

Translation....How do we know what makes a deer spook if we don't see it? We can surmise....but we're still guessing. Could have been a coyote. Could have heard something we didn't. Could have smelled something totally foreign. And yeah....could have smelled us.

Your scent could also go in the direction you're hoping for it to.....and get behind you and swirl back to where you don't want it to go.

Again....I give you hardcore guys a lot of credit for your tenacity.......but I just don't know how much of a "science" this "playing the wind" can be whittled down to.

I also LOVE it when a TV hunter tells his audience the deer caught his scent. LOL....how do they KNOW? Maybe he caught your camera man picking his nose? Maybe a glare off the camera lens? Maybe they caught your scent off your entrance trail? Maybe they smelled where deer earleir had been alerted and left scent? Maybe a wolf came through there, last night? Etc...etc...etc...

We have more days with variable winds than we do with a true, steady wind... I rarely move once I'm situated, b/c I know without question the wind will change again, it always does... Makes the hunting tough.

I don't know what to say.... I know that you've only been hunting for two years and I know it took me many years to experience and see what makes deer spook. In my experience, the number one thing that makes deer spook is

HUMAN SCENT!

It's a well known fact that the deers best sense is their smell. In the 40 years that I've hunted them, I've seen deer do some incredible things with their sense of smell. This is how they survive. Why would anyone down play a deers best defense mechanism. With all that has been published about their scenting capabilities and first hand observances from experienced hunters..... it baffles me that anyone would question the deers ability to detect and avoid danger with their sense of smell. The wind is a scent carrying agent and the deer use it to their advantage. That's gospel!

I agree with the wind playing a major role in hunting but I also agree you tomkat. I dont ever get down I just make sure that I am covered with as much scent eliminating material as possible. Scent lok suit, Scent Away Spray, Rubber boots, Cover scent possibly not alot of that. I dont move around alot. Unless Im rifle hunting, if nothing is going on I might get down and still hunt around field edges but thats about it.

Greg....I'm not downplaying their sense of smell, at all. I'm downplaying what I think is often OVERPLAYED......which is us thinking we know everything that spooks them and how to avoid it. In essence.....I'm giving them MORE credit for being harder to figure out.

I'm just saying we can't pas it off as "I got winded" everyt ime we see deer scamper. We ought to just say the truth. We don't know why they ran off. We didn't see anything. We didn't hear anything. We didn't smell anything.

It's a well-known fact in here that I have a healthy repsect for your knowledge of these animals. If you say they winded you.....I believe it. What I don't fall lock-step into is the bandwagon that says they won't hunt a stand they've checked the wind for (before they got into it)....if the wind switches.

In this scenario....I don't think you're givingYOURSELF enough credit.

No disrespect re: your knowledge or beliefs, at all.....just a difference of opinion.

Good ole mags they write one thing one onth and the exact opposite the next.