Too often when I read articles about deer stand setups or strategies for picking stand sites, it’s usually surface-level information. We get it by now – hunt funnels, set up downwind of trails, yada yada. What doesn’t get discussed nearly enough are the nuances and the enhancements.
Nuances like the perfect tree, the exacting access route, consideration of both the micro-site factors (the pinch point, the trail confluence, the scrape) and the macro-site factors (the “why” of what deer are doing). These are things that make the difference between seeing a few does and putting an arrow in your target buck.
Enhancements like a mock scrape, edge feathering, brush blockading, planting a few apple trees, and specifically located food plots. These are things that stack the odds ever so slightly more in your favor for that one single deer you’re after to stroll by during daylight.
Those surface-level details still matter tremendously. They’re the general principles of how deer use wind and terrain to travel. But consistently successful stands are those that consider the nuances and utilize enhancers to really define deer travel and reflect an understanding of how and why deer typically move throughout the course of the season.
My hope is that the following real-world stand setups help something click for you on your ground. These setups can exist on most pieces of ground. The trick is understanding the property to know generally where deer are bedding, where they’re feeding, how they get back and forth, and how these change throughout the year. Once you find the spot, adding in the enhancers is the real game changer.
The Headwaters Stand
This stand is one of my all-time favorites. The headwaters of a small creek begin about 50 yards west of the stand and flow north, scouring away the ridges that line each side.
You’ll often hear people from Missouri and Iowa talk about “ditch crossings” or something similar. Well, this is the flatland version of that. Though central Minnesota doesn’t have nearly the topography of our neighbors to the south, I have just enough that this creek forces deer to travel similarly to how they do in steeper terrain.
This is a stand I cut my whitetail teeth on, learning lesson after lesson both about how deer move and things I can do to work their tendencies into my favor. For the longest time, there were primary trails on the east and west side of the creek, traveling southeast and entering a food plot about 75 yards southeast of the stand. Primary bedding areas were about 300 yards to the northwest.
Access has always been the easy part about this stand. An east-west field road runs directly past the stand tree, a relic of when this property was a working dairy farm. This allows me to slip in almost silently by just following the field road right to the stand. There is plenty of cover and elevation between the stand and the food plot, allowing me to slip in early for morning sits and depart easily in the evening after shooting light fades. Bedding is far enough away that I don’t have much worry about spooking deer.
Over the years, this stand has proven to be a great option from early archery season all the way through the rut, and even into the late season depending on the food source in the food plot. Though I have a self-imposed rule of not hunting any stand more than a few times in a season, this one would be easy to get away with provided I practiced rigid scent control. As it is, I usually have a camera right next to this stand, and I try to let that tell me when I should be moving in.
When I was younger, the spot was an obvious stand location based on deer travel alone. However, back then, there were four or five deer trails exiting the woods on the east side of the creek spread out over about 100 yards or so. It didn’t take long for me to realize that this just wasn’t going to work if I didn’t want deer being educated quickly that they were being hunted. There was just no way to predict which trail the deer would use if they came out east of the creek.
The solution was edge feathering. The timber consisted almost exclusively of mature hardwoods, primarily oak, maple, and basswood. It was too easy for deer to stroll out wherever they pleased. This area also has a lot of ironwood and skinny sugar maple in the understory, which made perfect targets for hinge-cutting. My goal was simple – make enough of a mess east of the stand and widen out the existing trail west of the stand so that deer would be foolish to not take the easy route.
In a 10-yard-wide strip, I harvested most of the mature aspens for a couple hundred yards east of my stand. Following the aspen removal, I went back and I hinge-cut all of the ironwood and many of the skinny maples to create a crisscrossed, jumbled mess of wood. I wanted it to look like a tornado had gone through this narrow strip. For good measure, I did the same thing on the west side of the west trail for about 100 yards, just to make sure no deer got any hare-brained ideas about not using the trails that come right by the stand.
It worked like a charm. Now, these two trails form a confluence about 10 yards from the stand, and it’s a slam dunk shot. I even have the stand set up so that I can take the shot sitting down, further minimizing movement prior to the shot.
The past couple years, I have focused on turning this area where these two trails come together on the old field road into a massive communication hub for the deer. Usually in late July, I’ll go out and make about half a dozen huge mock scrapes within this 50-yard area to really incentivize deer travel. Being that these are right on the road, I can easily refresh these weekly throughout the season with nothing more than a small garden rake and whatever combination of dominant buck urine, preorbital gland lure, and estrous doe urine I choose.
I have a real soft spot for this stand, and it just keeps getting better with time.
The Hillside Stand
This is one of my newest stands, but it’s quickly rising up my favorites list. The block of woods southwest of the box stand and the woods to the east are mature hardwoods, dominated by oak, maple, and basswood. The open areas consist of open grassland and some planted conifers, with a food plot just north of the stand that has long been in place.
A fairly large block of primary bedding cover sits atop the ridge to the west of the stand, with some additional bedding maybe a quarter mile east of the stand. I’m not totally sure what it is about the combination of terrain and cover, but deer have always gravitated to the corner of the food plot that this stand sits next to.
I can’t describe it any other way than that it’s a very “secure” feeling when you stand in that corner of the food plot. Deer were coming out of the corner of the timber here long before this stand was here, and it took far too long to catch on that I needed to find a way to get a stand here.
The real key to this setup is that the actual stand sits on the hillside. Essentially, the “box” of the stand sits almost exactly level with the top of the hillside. This makes movement a key consideration here, but that was a major factor in choosing a box blind. I have curtains on the south side of the stand, which is tucked up against a tight planting of conifers, meaning there’s nothing to see out that way.
To ensure I could get away with numerous wind directions and to prevent any unwanted surprises, I heavily edge feathered the first 10 yards of the block of woods for over 100 yards north to south. This doubles as a fantastic way to access this stand from the south.
As a cherry on top, I pounded in a T-post about 20 yards in front of the stand just in the food plot, to which I zip-tie a nice-sized oak branch horizontally each year. It seems a bit suspect to my human eyes, but something about the bushy oak branch sucks in deer like a magnet, and it makes for a great shot opportunity. I always have the branch facing east-southeast, meaning any deer working the branch should be either fully broadside or slightly quartering away from me, making for an ideal shot angle.
Though I think I could probably get away with morning sits here, particularly during the rut, I reserve this stand exclusively for evening sits. My area sees some extensive hunting pressure, and I go out of my way to keep deer as unassuming as possible. It’s why I’m such a stickler on pressure and access, because I don’t have the luxury of getting away with sloppy hunting.
This stand has proven to be one that can produce during all seasons depending on the crop in the food plot, but my favorite times have been during the pre-rut and during our late muzzleloader season. I have had numerous great encounters with this setup.
The Ridge Saddle Stand
This one is another “classic” setup that has stood the test of time across the whitetail’s range. Two ridge systems come together right here, with most of the bedding occurring across the creek on the south-facing slope. On the south ridge, there’s an obvious saddle between two high spots, and it’s a travel magnet year after year.
Though I identified the spot as a prime stand site when I was much younger, it took me a long time to dial this one in. Truth be told, this is one I still make tweaks with often, as I still think I could do more to foolproof the stand from getting busted.
When I first hung this stand, it became clear immediately what a high-risk setup this was. Deer would come from the north, cross the creek, and as soon as they would hit the saddle, they would fan out in all directions. This resulted in me getting busted far more often than I can tolerate, so I knew I needed to do something.
“This is a stand I’ll usually only hunt a couple times per year at most. The activity here is fantastic, but that’s because I’m not constantly sitting the stand and blowing the area out.”
In this case, I tried to create wide brush blockades, both east of the stand to prevent deer from going downwind of me, and a ways west of me to encourage deer to stay on the primary trail and in bow range. I started by dragging in as much brush as I could and piling it to discourage deer travel. I then went in and hinge-cut all the ironwood and many skinny maples to create a wide swath that was virtually impenetrable.
At their widest points, these are probably over 30 yards wide. I go back and forth over whether I should do more, because it would be relatively easy for deer to get downwind of me if they really felt like it. However, with the way deer typically move through this area, it hasn’t proven to be a major concern as of yet.
This setup is a classic rut stand. There is always a huge community scrape about 20 yards from the stand where the trails come together on the saddle, and bucks love cruising this ridge turn during the rut trying to sniff out estrous does across the valley.
This stand is one that I will only hunt during the rut and when conditions are ideal. Though I’ve done quite a bit to minimize the impact of hunting here, the reality is that this is still one of my higher impact stands, and it’s not worth the risk of educating deer to hunt here other times of the year unless the camera on the scrape is showing substantial daylight buck activity.
I always try to access this route by essentially following the primary deer trail in from the south but staying about 10 yards on the downwind side of the trail. This seems to keep deer relatively unaware that I’m intruding so far into the woods and getting in tighter than I normally do. This is a stand I’ll usually only hunt a couple times per year at most. The activity here is fantastic, but that’s because I’m not constantly sitting the stand and blowing the area out.
The Eagle’s Nest Stand
This setup is flat-out cool to me. It’s in a big block of mature hardwoods that has a lot of cool topography going on. When you’re up in the stand, it feels like you can see for a mile, which is how it got the name of “The Eagle’s Nest.”
The way the ridges turn, there are three fairly distinctive bedding areas south of the stand, with deer generally shifting their exact bedding location based on wind direction. There are a lot of crisscrossing trails about 100–130 yards south of the stand, many of them related to the bedding that exists on these ridges.
This year, I installed a small clover food plot on a tiny bench on the ridge side that runs maybe 70 yards north to south. This was an area deer traveled through anyway, and I’m hoping the food plot only accentuates that. I also installed a pair of mock scrapes about 20 yards from the stand as another reason to stroll by nice and close.
Primarily, this is a stand designed for firearms season and the rut. In my home state of Minnesota, our firearms season coincides with some of the heaviest rutting activity, and this stand is made to exploit both of those things.
The real brilliance of this stand is that it feels every bit like a deep-woods setup – and yet, it’s only 100 yards into the woods. I can easily access this stand from the northeast (unfortunately by climbing straight up the ridge), and my impact in doing so is negligible. Any deer in the bedding areas should be unaware of me slipping in or out.
Though the stand is intended primarily for firearms season use, this could easily double as an early season or pre-rut bow stand if trail cameras dictate. I have a camera both on the mock scrapes and on one of the trail confluences to the south, and if a buck is giving me a reason to go after him this year, I might give it a shot. The stand is designed to shoot a bow out of, so it should certainly give me the opportunity to try it if the deer cooperate.
Final Thoughts
I’m a huge believer in the idea that there’s more than one right answer to a lot of this deer hunting stuff. Though I’m always searching for perfection, I’m not naïve enough to think these are “perfect” stand sites. Personally, I think they’re pretty good and they’ve provided some great encounters and shot opportunities over the years, but I’m always evaluating them and scratching my head about what I could do differently to up my odds.
At the end of the day, it comes down to understanding deer behavior and travel tendencies. Once you have a firm grasp on how deer are utilizing and traveling through your hunting area, find the spots that concentrate deer movement, or provide you an opportunity to slip into a high-traffic area with minimal intrusion.
When you have these spots identified, get your stand in place, and then start throwing in the enhancers that’ll put that stand over the top. I can’t say enough good things about using edge feathering or brush blockades to keep deer from getting downwind of your setup. Mock scrapes can be your best friend if you’re meticulous about scent control and judicious refreshing.
Finally, don’t be afraid to experiment and find out what works for you wherever you’re at. None of this is going to drastically alter the course of our lives, so get creative and see what works best for your particular situation. It doesn’t have to work every time. It just needs to tilt the odds ever so slightly in your favor. That’s the name of the game when it comes to tagging mature whitetails.