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I had an old Alabama redneck (term used fondly) tell me one time, “Boy, our deer walk around with their heads back, looking up in the trees, cause so many of their brothers and sisters and cousins have had an arrow run through ‘em!” If you have bowhunted pressured, spooky Southern deer you know what my old redneck friend is talking about.

Biologists say a deer’s eyes are oriented to pick up predator movement at or just below the horizon. They say a deer is much less adept at picking up movement above the horizon, so you can get away with more movement in a tree stand than on the ground. Sometimes!

But when an 8-pointer or old doe is 100 yards out and coming straight in on a string (eyes with a wide field of view) you’d better be still, because according to how the terrain lays, you many times will appear on the same visual plane as the deer. Move too much and an animal will bust you! Rarely will a buck that is close crane its head and look straight up into your tree, though I have seen them do it. But if you bang the stand with your boot or do some other foolish thing, it will always peek up at you.

It’s not a bad idea to spend $50 bucks or so for a small camo blind that attaches to your stand, breaks your outline and covers your movements when deer approach. 0r you could just duct-tape some camo mesh around the base of your stand and call it good. If the mesh blows and flutters in the breeze, better for your concealment.

Do deer look up very often where you hunt? As I said, I’ve seen them do it a lot down South, not so much in the Midwest.