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10 on 58 acres I have stands as close as 35 yrds apart on a hinge cut fence to hunt with multiple winds also two on a 2 acre food plot to hunt with any wind. So far I have hunted there 4 times this year including a hunt with the kids.
I will start by saying not long after I bought the first tract to my farm, a client came to hunt and he said “is your goal to have a stand in every tree”.
I've got 4 that are for bow hunting on the actual camp property. I have 4 other stands on other properties for rifle season. I'll be placing more stands at camp in the next few years for bow hunting as our apple & crab trees go into bigger production.
As for bow stands - with shifting winds and changing food sources …………. can we ever have too many ??
This post makes me feel inadequate. I now have a size complex which wasn’t here before. I’m actually learning a new farm this year and he left his stands when I bought it. I’ll be replacing all of them next year. He had 10 stands on 200 acres. I will have 3 tower blinds, 2 bale blinds, and 12 ladder stands (I’m done with hang on stands) up next year...and more the following as I learn the farm better. My problem is good access to stands which is why I’m limited on the number of stands right now. I have to address my access plans first and that will take some time.
I used to have ~6 on 110 acres. Low-key access is a problem here. It's tough to hunt this property because of limited access routes and unfriendly wind patterns.
The ash borer situation has really impacted potential stand sites, too. Many hundreds of great trees for stands are dead statues still standing, or they are corpses littering the ground everywhere.
I now have only one actual stand hung on that acreage, but the reason for only one is because, as of this year, I've become a dedicated Tree Saddle hunter. Pretty much every fricken tree in the woods can be a stand if I want it to be a stand.
If you don't have a saddle, you are missing out on a fantastic tool.
Habitat work really helps out creating additional hunting locations for the wind, and not burning out areas. Buck i took this year, I sat in this stand the most of all other stands this year. I think it was my 3rd or 4th time in the stand...but, it was the first morning in that stand. The day before, but brother took a buck from a stand 125 yards from this one. It was his first morning sit in that stand. He said he saw the buck i took around 65 yards from him.
I have 10 on 40 but really need 3 or 4 more. Seems this year we had many of the SSW and NNW winds instead of the SW and NW winds we normally have and I really needed the extra stands. The buck I shot this year we had rain and crazy wind in the morning so I didn’t go out until 10:00 AM and at 11:30 the wind changed so I changed stands. It wasn’t until 1:00 that I shot the buck.
Some stands are 30 yards apart but they become useful as the landscape changes. The change might be from a big maple to a pine for more cover.
I live right in the middle of my property and everyone tells me how bad that is but the deer haven’t seemed to care much. I just try to have bomb proof access to stands and it has worked out well.
I had 15 sits this year and 8 of them were from the same stand. It was sit 8 that I connected. It’s my best stand and any Westerly wind hits you in the face and no deer can get behind you. Access is out my front door and behind a hinge cut barrier that covers all movement. I really felt like I over hunted it but saw at least 6 deer on every sit this year as they browses one of my TNM plots while heading out to the big field.
2 so far on my little 20 acres......next spring I plan on adding an inground bow blind looking over a waterhole......do I count my front and back porch and my bedroom windows??