Our thanks to Summit Treestands for their donation of a new Summit Ultimate Viper treestand along with a set of Bucksteps.
We had several thousand people participate in Treestand Challenge 3. We also had some excellent dialogue contributed to the online discussion. Our thanks to all of you for helping make this game our most popular to date.
This property has been hunted a lot by the Founder of Bowsite.com – Pat Lefemine along with several others who have hunted with Cimmaron River Outfitters in Kansas. In total he has spent approximately 100 hours over four years hunting whitetails here from early-November all the way thru late December. He has killed deer here and has seen dozens of shooter bucks. Of those sightings, about 80% of them have passed by two locations. Stand 2, and Stand 5.
The correct answers for this competition
Morning = Stand 2 (16% chose this for the morning stand)
As many of you correctly noted, mature bucks like to follow the gulley when heading to and from the wheat field. That puts them past stand 2 in the morning and sets you up for a great shot. It should be noted that this same pattern has been observed both with and without bait. All the bait did was anchor the deer for a minute or two for a better shot the times it was used. While the deer pattern is consistent, this is also a great stand to slip in and out of. The wind patterns are perfect for this stand, typically blowing to the road and with the exception of some rarely used trails to the East, you rarely need to cross a deer trail keeping scent to a minimum
Evening = Stand 5 (23% chose this for the evening stand)
While stand 2 was often used as a staging area for does and small bucks in the evening, it was not ideal for mature bucks during that time. The bucks would follow the does and often hang back in the cedars till dark and that made this stand better for evening hunts. Plus, you would be directly facing the deer as they came down the trail. Several bucks did make it to stand 2, but nearly all bucks made it to stand 5 while there was still shooting light. While not directly noted in the game, there was sometimes an active scrape there as well – however it was not always in the same place. Getting in and out of this stand was surprisingly easy given the wind and the fact that it was not far into the trees from the edge. And like stand 2, getting in this stand required very few trail crossings so human scent was minimized.
The total percentage of people who got both answers correct was 3%
