SERIOUS QUESTON ABOUT HUNTING THE WIND

I see al the post about hunting the wind and everything. Now I was thinking if you have your stand hung in a way you want to hunt a particular spot and a particular wind . you get there and the wind is RIGHT you get settled in and everything then when it is PRIME time all you hear are deer blowing at you because they have deicded to come into your stand from a differnet location. how many can honestly say that every deer they hunt will come from that exact direction every single time?.. In my honest opinion i think deer will come and go as they please from what ever direction they please. im not one to pay hundreds of dollars on all the HIGH TECH carbon gimmic suits and everything, only thing i use is a bottle of dead down wind and that is it .. if i want to hunt a certian stand i spray down and hunt it if i get winded then so be it.. ..

again what is your opinion on this thinking

Ofcourse they come and go as they please.

But, you can still hunt smart and hunt in a way that there is only a small chance a deer will come form down wind. I play the wind every chance I get, But sometimes there is no way around it. If you set up down wind of the food source, and down wind of the major trails, obviously you have greatly decreased your chances of being winded.

Just gotta give up deer coming from down wind. Most of my places I know where deer come from MOST of the time. If you scout a place well enough you should know where they should come from and should hunt that spot depending on the wind. But like you said you have some random passer-bys every now and then, but there's nothing you can do about that.

What I find funny are these little bottles of powder or whatever that show you the wind direction. Once I'm in the stand and settled, I'm there for the duration, no matter what the wind does. I honestly don't pay a whole lot of attention to wind direction when choosing a spot. If possible I'll get it set up so a North or West wind is good, but it's not a deal breaker

I wouldn't hunt in this wind today. Daggumit!

I much prefer to hunt in a 10-15 mph sustained wind than the normal 1-3 mile per hour swirling wind we normally have. On days like this, I slip in closer to the bedding areas than I would normally go. The wind helps cover any noise. The deer are still going to move. I've killed some of my best bucks on windy days.

A big 4 1/2 year old plus buck is going to come in to a food source down wind. He is old for a reason!! No matter how munch $ you spend on scent lock clothes and cover ups a 5 1/2 year old is gonna wind you in Alabama.people watch too much of those hunting shows on TV from out west. I have hunted all over the USA and Canada! Killing a big buck here is the hardest thing to do as a hunter!Let all those TV stars come to my club and hunt a season.They will be headed back out west or up north with their tail tucked between thier legs!!!!And all of the real hunters on Aldeer know that!

I agree 100% that they usually approach a feeding area from downwind. On days like today, and yesterday, IF a hunter takes good scent control measures the wind can and most times will disperse the human odor keeping you from getting winded. It has worked for me on mature deer on more than one occasion.

A lot of pro hunters could kill good deer anywhere. They have the experience, time, and money to do so. The guys that kill boomers every single year could kill deer here. A booner out west is just about as hard to kill as a good deer here. I agree that some of them would tuck tail and hit the road though. We will never know though, cause they won't come here and hunt and I don't blame them. Hunting the Midwest is so much fun!

If I'm rifle hunting, I try to climb as high as I possibly can. Sometimes 40+ feet.

For the last couple of years, I've started building a small fire just before going into the woods and hover over it for a few minutes. May be coincidence, but i seem to get busted a lot less than I used to.

Been told high is good.....what about what you leave on the ground coming in....how long for it to clear up?

When I went on a hunt out on the Milk River I had 5 150-160 class deer in the field every day for a week!The same thing happened when i was in Canada 20 or 30 130-150 eating out of a bait pile every day! Do that down here in Alabama!!!!!!It's fun hunting out west like you said that's why i go a few times a year!!

I know I have the best chance for success when the wind is in my favor and I try to hang my stands accordingly and hunt that way.

In reality it rarely ever works out where it's in my favor and if I waited for it to be perfect I'd never get to hunt. I've got hills and hollows. Even yesterday at 10+ mph the wind changed on me every 15 or 20 minutes.

I think wind is important. Do I treat it like its important? N0. For many people hunting with the wind isn't even an option especially if you don't have a large amount of land to hunt. You may only have 1 or 2 good hunting spots and so its hunt without the wind or don't hunt. I believe the scent you should be worried about most is whats on your boots and clothing that will be touching stuff while going in. Most animals that can scent stuff do it on the ground. I normally hunt from a tree stand and rarely have a deer that scents me or that acts like it scents me. I feel like the normal scent that you put off probably doesn't linger that long, so if you're up high in a stand then it should be hard for them to wind you. Now if you're on the ground or not very high then thats different. These are just my thoughts and I don't kill big deer consistently so don't listen to me too closely on the issue. Thats just the way I go about it. Big bucks are smart and hard to kill. The way I've decided to hunt is Oct-Dec is for meat. I've got to the point where I don't even really try to hunt for big bucks until the rut. I've never killed a decent buck outside of the rut so I'll hunt in places I tend to see more deer in early season and if I see a good buck then so be it.

Just a thought from a few of the comments in this post.

If Big Bucks will normally only come to a food source down wind of it then what good is it going to do you to hunt where the wind is not blowing towards where he would be coming from?

I climb high 30 to 40 feet spray down good let the wind blow very
careful with my scent control

Regarding the hanging stand part of your post, I try to hang 15-20 stands every year. Some of them are "wind specific" to the point you have to have a straight north... or a consistent southeast wind. However, many of them are positioned to be a "general wind stand". For instance, right now I have a stand on a gas well road which simply requires a wind from the south to hunt (ESE/SE/S/SW/WSW). It's been my experience that I get busted less from these kinds of stands. If you'll take the time and energy to scout a stand location, you can often find a location overlooking a trail/food source which affords you a greater "margin of error" regarding wind. JMO

...I've got hills and hollows. Even yesterday at 10+ mph the wind changed on me every 15 or 20 minutes.


This. Hunting this past Saturday with what the weather channel said to be 12-15 mph NNW winds...yeah right. About the only thing I could count on was the speed of the wind. While sitting on stand the wind was constantly changing. Add to that hills and drainages it was like sitting in a funnel. Wind comes from one direction and without taking a breath changes from the total opposite direction. If it does stay constant in direction it goes past you up a bottom, hits a hill side and circles right back though what you are trying to hunt. What to do? Either stay home or go hunt and hope for the best. I opt to hunt and hope.

I consider the wind when hanging my stands or choosing one to hunt, most of the time there is little or no wind when I climb & it almost always swirls & changes while I'm up. There isn't a thing I can do about it, so my concern with it stops right about there. I hunted yesterday, had gusts up to 25 mph or so, with periods of no wind at all, and I saw 2 deer that I never would have seen from my couch.

I can honestly say that I've never given the wind much thought.

They don't hunt here because they need footage, you can work a week in the Heartland and have more footage than you would ever get in a month in Alabama... I talked to Stan Potts about this and he said the SE is too damn hard!! LOL!!!

I don't doubt that at all in the hills and hollers of sand mountain but in flat swamp land in MGM county your gonna get busted. Besides the wind yesterday and today it's just to cold for my almost fifty year old butt.

Yeap, exactly right. Most all of our footage comes from the Midwest.

I could get all the footage needed for making a hunting show right here in Alabama. The reality of the matter is most folks don't care to watch our type of hunting. I hunt some of the best property this state has to offer for seeing large numbers of deer and some pretty intense rutting action. The problem is, the deer I see aren't the quality of bucks most will see in the Midwest. However, by my standards they are nice quality bucks for the area. I will have to admit the land I hunt is similar to the Midwest with crops, woodlots, fingers and thickets. It makes for good hunting, lots of deer seen and a very visible rut.

Not sure why people would pay $ for a lease, $ for seed and fert, $ on hunting equipment and completely ignore the #1 thing that will blow your hunt before it begins....scent control!!! From mild to wild it does nothing but help your chances of seeing deer, and more importantly, not to educate every deer on your property of when you are there. I bet everyone here sights their gun or bow in to the 10th degree and checks it often. Why do that if your approach to hunting is ill hope for the best and maybe the wind will blow in my favor, but if not, ill go where I had pictures of a good buck and cross my fingers....to each his own but it only helps. Now that I have said all of this, someone will kill a 200" deer wearing clothes he cut firewood in all day, smoking a cigarette, that came in downwind.

Only if he's paralyzed his sensory organs lol

I agree