I’ve keyed these 6 setups to the 3 different stages of the rut you’ll be hunting this fall.  Whether the big bucks are feeding, rubbing, scraping or chasing the does, we’ll put you in the hot seat. All that’s left is making the shot, and that is up to you.

PRE-RUT: The River Strip

One September morning my buddy Dan Jones climbed into a tree stand he’d set 50 yards off a river in northern Montana. The south wind was perfect, blowing out of an alfalfa field 100 yards to the south, wafting through the narrow timber strip and pushing his scent across the deep river where no deer would approach. Around 7:30 Dan saw movement on a trail 150 yards out. He readied his bow and didn’t wait long. The first buck of the bachelor group was the biggest; when he was broadside, Dan drew and fired. The arrow sliced though the air, and buried to the vanes in the 10-pointer’s boiler room.

A strip set like that is dynamite in October. Any deer that linger in a nearby feed field will slowly drift off into a strip of timber, hit a trail before they get to the river (or a deep stream or creek) and turn left or right to filter back toward a bedding area. If your stand is in the right spot on the trail, there’s a good chance you’ll get a shot.

Multi-Edge Set

Hunting on the same ranch with Dan later in the week, I moved a few miles down the river and hung a lock-on just off a ranch road, in a cottonwood on the edge of a timber strip. I could see deer coming a mile away through the alfalfa and corn to the north. Again the south wind was perfect, blowing my scent across a corner of the alfalfa and out over some old sheds and barns that blocked deer from coming in downwind. Here’s the part I liked the most. A strip of weeds and grass ran upwind of my stand, bordered by another strip of trees to the southeast. Any deer that came in off the alfalfa that morning would naturally gravitate to this funnel, which was only 35 yards wide. If a shooter walked through there, he’d be in the kill zone.

At 7:45 AM I saw two shooters coming a long way off. At 8 o’clock they hit the dirt road to the east and walked down it, straight to me. On cue, they turned, took the weed funnel and walked broadside 30 yards below the stand. The wide 8-pointer in the lead was a year older than the 10-pointer, so I drew and rolled him.

In the pre-rut, before the bucks get too horny and while they are still locked into a solid feed-to-bed pattern, hang a stand in a spot like that with lots of diversity and funneling features. It’s all about edges, man, deer are attracted to them year-round, and they especially walk them to and from feed to bed in the pre-rut.

RUT: The Ridge Post

One October Brent Irelan’s buddy missed a double-drop-tined monster not once but twice. Disgusted and thinking he messed up that spot on a ridge near a picked soybean field, he decided to move his stand. But Brent had a notion the buck was still in the area, so he set a trail camera on a ridge near the miss site. He checked the cam the next day—there was an image of Double Drop! Brent hung another stand, hunted it hard for week and saw a lot of deer.

 

On November 6 a stick cracked. The Indiana bowhunter turned and saw Double Drop! He smoked him with an arrow. The rack netted 199 and change non-typical!

 

Brent’s hunt says it all. From mid-October through early November there is no better spot for your tree stand than on an elevated ridge near a field of beans, corn or alfalfa. A ridge is a staging area near the doe feed and a hub of buck traffic. Both local and vagabond studs work the area, rubbing, scraping and sniffing out does. Set your stand on one corner of the ridge where the access is best, and where predominant wind will be right most days. You will be in the hot seat and see at least one good buck and likely more. Brent saw a 150-inch giant on the same ridge where he ultimately shot Double Drop.

 

This is a great spot to set out some buck or doe scent, and to grunt and bleat. If you rattle, do so sparingly in the morning and watch for a monster sneaking in. If you hunt the stand in the afternoon, I wouldn’t rattle, but a little calling couldn’t hurt.

The Creek Cover

One day in Illinois I set up high on a ridge where I could watch a long creek bottom below. Around 9 am a tine flashed in a thicket. I raised my binoculars and glassed a giant 9-pointer. The buck was rutting hard, moving slowly but steadily along the water’s edge with his nose to the ground. After checking the first thicket, he crossed the creek and bore through the next copse of cover in a bend. He kept it up until he had checked every pocket of brush and weeds in the creek bends. Finding no does, he moved off.

At 10:30 another buck came through with his nose glued to the ground, doing the same thing, checking all the cover pockets. Twice he stopped to rub trees and rip scrapes. In the third cover he jumped a doe. She took off and he galloped away on her heels.

I had to get in on the action, so that afternoon I moved my stand down on the creek and set up downwind of one of those thickets. The next day the 9-pointer cruised back through. I am sad to report that I sailed a carbon arrow over his spine. It was a hard-luck lesson, but it taught me this. From around Halloween until mid-November, move into a creek bottom and set up tight in a pocket of cover. Hang your stand on a trail, and near a shallow crossing if possible. A buck checking for does won’t plunk into deep water and swim across, but he’ll darn sure walk across a gravel or sand bar as he scours the covers.

Make sure your scent blows back out into the open timber, not up or down the creek. A cruiser buck might come trolling for does from either direction, so keep your eyes peeled. Set out a wick of doe scent. If you sit awhile one morning, try some doe bleats or a volley or two of rattling. Again, look both ways for a big boy on the prowl.

POST-RUT: Last Point of Cover

One time I was hunting in December with my friend David Hale. It was cold and frozen, and the woods were silver and barren. The corn fields in the area were picked clean, and the food plots were brown.

“Tough-looking spot, where we gonna hunt?” I wondered.

“I don’t know about you, but that’s me right there,” David said, pointing to a narrow ditch of rocks, weeds and greenbrier that dumped into the tundra corn field.

The spot didn’t do much for me. “Well then, good luck,” I said as I hurried off to hunt another stand.

I checked on Hale at dark. He had a 140-inch buck on the ground.

As Hale points out, it’s pretty simple science. Does and especially bucks that have been hunted hard for months come to the last morsels of food in a field or plot, but they don’t move in the open woods. “They cling to the last strips of standing weeds or brush, whatever that is,” Hale says. “That’s where you need to set up, tight to that cover and close to the feed.”

Good access to and from a tree stand is important any time of the season, and it’s imperative when deer are tired and spooky in the winter. You must be able to slip in quietly from downwind without a single animal seeing or hearing you. If you bump one doe, she’ll run and take all the deer with her. You won’t see a buck that night.

Half-Mile Pines

Iowa bowhunter and friend Don Kisky has killed some huge bucks in the post-rut by taking the opposite approach. “Sometimes the deer and especially the mature bucks are so spooked that they simply won’t come out into the feed until well after dark, period,” he says. “You have to go back to them.”

One year Don recalls hunting a week in December without seeing a shooter on his farm. He saw a few does at first and last light, but no bucks. “I knew some great bucks were still around, but they simply would not show in the fields.” Don slipped back into a rough, rocky hollow and set up on the edge of a pine thicket more than a half-mile off a corn and soybean field. The first evening he hunted the stand he killed a 160-class buck, “but even back in there he didn’t move until 15 minutes before dark,” he says.

Late in the season, check an aerial photo for a couple of rough, thick draws or canyons that run a mile or more back to a pine or cedar thicket, or maybe a swamp. Move in and set up stands for ambushes well off the feed. From one of these sets, you might whack a monster and fill your last tag in a big way either morning or evening.