Thanks everyone for all the insightful information! I think I will start this year by joining a hunting club and taking a safety course, and ease into it for next year. All the input is really appreciated, so thanks again to each of you for taking the time to give such detailed responses.

I hate saying this (as I hate product plug's myself), but you may want to check our video out (see link at bottom). We show some pretty specific reasons for hunting the locations we are hunting, and talk ALOT about wind. You will learn some things, and a video does say a thousand things beyond a picture.

http://www.huntingnet.com/shoppingcart/Default.aspx?CategoryID=11&ItemID=WKP01

Not a bad suggestion. I'll check it out. Thanks!

How to stand Hunt:

Successful stand hunting requires three skills, knowing where to position your stand,; learning how to enter and exit it without alerting deer; and understanding how long to hunt the site before abandoning it in favor of a new location.

When choosing a stand location, consider wind direction first and foremost. To ensure that your scent does not alert you quarry, set up downwind or at worst crosswind, from the directions you expect deer to approach. Elevated stand can sometimes carry your odor over deer, but don't rely on this. If in doubt about wind direction, squirt scent free powder or toss a pinch ofgrass down into the air to test the air.

If possible, place your stand so that the low sun will shine from behind you, effectively blinding your quarry. The best location for a morning stand, then, is to the southeast of where you expect to see deer, in the evening, position your stand to the southwest, but only if the breeze allows.

Don't set up too close to where you expect deer to appear; whitetails an meander many yards off the predicted route. And the closer you are to game, the greater the odds it will hear, smell or see you. A gun hunter should stay as far back as the terrain, cover, and his killing accuracy permit.

Scouting:

First look at aerial photographs and topographical maps of the property. Look for natural barriers that form bottle necks, funnels, and travel corridors, feeding areas of maybe agricultural fields or group of oak trees. Also look for inside corners, benches, break lines, fence crows and saddles. Get a digital trail camera to put out on the property and always be scent conscious when going out and comming in from camera checks.When in the fieldlook for rubs, scrapes, and definitelylook for lots of track activity.

Publick or Private:

I hunt privateso I cant really help on the topic ofhunting public land.

Field Dressing:

Weusually drag off andfield dressthedeeraway from where we hunt (we have a weighing station/cleaing station) and put the entrails wherewe mighthunt coyotes or just ina field away from where we normally hunt. But I have fielddressed a buckalmoston top of where I hunt and got blood everywhere because I was hunting by myself and needed to get some of pounds off this deer to move it. The next day still had deer coming but I have only done that once.

Read as much asyou can:

Thisforum great place, you canread lots of articles forfree on the internet, read books, but reading magazines can be good too.