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Thanks for shedding some light on the subject BOWDACIOUS....

I know they can see in the dark but I' ve seen them in fields and as I walk they walk an keep abou 40-50 yds away this goes on for quite some time before either they trot away or I quit playing with them. I' ve actually walked to within 20 yds while they were looking right at me. Can any one eXplain?

Bowdacious makes a great point and I hope it isn' t missed. You should always stalk your stand, daylight or dark. If you booting deer out, your losing the game before you start. Yes, deer can see at night, not quite as well as they can during light hours but they can and you will spook them if your not in stealth mode. Yes, you can seem to get closer to them under darkness, like Bow mentioned, they are less wary, at least of humans....simply put they don' t encounter humans under darkness and that' s probably the simple reason you can actually get closer however, you can blow it before the hunt begins so.....stalk your stand, don' t daylight yourself in the darkness.

I agree but look at it in a different way

What if the biggest buck in the county was 400 yds away and coming my way. Thats the way I look at it. I figure any deer close is going to bust me in darknes nomatter what I do[X(]. I would rather make more noise for 5 minutes than a little noise for 15 minutes. I like to get in and up and settled - with as little time spent on the ground leaving scent as I can. I am always thinking " they are on there way" and I have to get set up and quiet as soon as possible.

But then again if you ever saw me " stalk" you would understand why I don' t

Good points made here. I am kinda in between the extemes...depending on where I am hunting. I have a few spots that I can stealth in quietly and I like that. However, most of the spots I hunt, are fairly rugged terrain, and quiet is not really a word that would describe it. In those cases, I just make my noise, get in, and get settled. I do find that going earlier to these spots seems to help settle them down better. If I' m in the stand 45mins or an hour with total quiet, I usually do better than if it gets light shortly after all the commotion.

Perhaps the " cover of darkness" doesn' t actually make the hunter invisible on the way to the stand but I' ve walked through feed fields plenty of times with deer in the fields watching me walk to my stand and then continue to feed. I' m not a deer and nobody I know is a deer so as far as I know there is nobody that really knows what a deer sees. I' m sure they see better in the dark than we do but in my opinion it' s not like they have " night vision" . I think they do feel more secure for whatever reason which is why I think it is important to use the darkness as a time to move about to and from stands in the deer woods. They let me get very, very close to them in the dark. Last year I was arms length from a doe in the dark and it was not until she made a turn to come down the trail I was on that she saw me and spooked...she was just 3 yards away. I don' t think she would have done this in the daylight. I do agree that one should be as careful walking to the stand in the dark as in the light but I think you are overestimating the power of the deer' s conical capacity.

I have to agree with wolfen68. While they can see better in the dark than we can, I don' t think that they have night vision. Good luck.

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I have read somewhere...cant remember when or where it was that Deer way way way back in the day were daytime animals. Hunting pressure from Man forced them to adapt to nocturnal activities, that it was more a learned behavior than a instinctual one.Again, I cant back that up, just throwing my two cents in.