Here are 4 places where you can’t go wrong hanging tree stands in the coming weeks. Break Lines: Look for linear strips where dark pine timber and/or hardwoods come together with brush, tall grass, second-growth saplings, etc. Deer love to walk and browse on these edges year-round; bucks rub and scrape like mad on the lines as the rut approaches. Oak Ridges. A narrow hogback with acorn trees within 100 yards of a corn or bean field is one of my favorite spots. Deer cut around points, ditches and gullies on the ridges; hang stands on or near these terrains to funnel bucks close for shots. Does and bucks eat acorns and browse in ridge thickets not only in the evenings, [...]

  From this new book from the Boone and Crockett Club, interesting weather data as reported by thousands of hunters that shot monster bucks for the record book. --93 percent of those giants were shot on dry days; half the days were sunny, and half were overcast --the wind was calm, 5 mph or less, on 85 percent of the days when the big bucks were killed --8 out of 10 of the monsters were shot when the temperature was 50 degrees F or less My take on the numbers: Regarding the 93 percent that were killed on dry days, I bet if we look deeper inside that data, we' find a pattern that consisted of dry, high-pressure days after a cool-to-cold weather front, something I’ve blogged about [...]

Guest blog from Montana bowhunter Luke Strommen, a charter member of the Big Deer Hunt Team: Here is story and a lesson I have learned. One time I spotted a gnarly 6x6 buck during my scouting and glassing routines in the summer.  The mature whitetail used his primary core area throughout July and August. I saw him many times and took some distant digital images of him from one of our tree stands. He would browse in an irrigated alfalfa field, and having completed his evening ritual, he’d sneak off to spend the night in a 20-acre corn field nearby. He continued this pattern into the early archery season in September, consistently passing by one of my stands, but late. [...]

My friend and expert bowhunter Terry Drury typically hangs 3 to 6 tree stands in a 100-acre block of timber. Ideally you’ll spread out those stands to cover as much woods as possible, and to have options for different winds. But don’t force that. “If I’ve got 100 acres but only 25 of those acres are conducive to hanging stands with quiet and hidden access to and from them, I’ll do all of my hunting from maybe 3 stands set strategically around those 25 acres,” says Drury. “Most hunters naturally want to hunt and cover as many acres as they can, and in theory that is good thinking. But if you try to bull your way into tough, thick spots and hang [...]