Ep. 800: Foundations - Season-Long Stand Setups Done Right, Right Now

like that. Well, it was one of those dumb nagging thoughts to spawn the idea for this podcast. And you know also the fact that it's go time for summer scouting and tree stand prep now. If you're not out there getting something ready to go, you might miss your window and you don't want that. You also don't want to sabotage your future hunting self by not taking care of business now, which is really kind of what this

episode is all about. About fifteen years ago, I was out looking for a good way to access some new public land by my house. The property had gone from private ownership to county ownership, and it looked like a good place to shoot some ducks and arrow a few deer. It also bought it up to a few different roads, so I started poking around. On one of the dead end spots I found where I thought I could access the property, I parked, hiked into it, and took a

good look around. And when I came back out, there was a guy standing by my truck, which always sucks. It turned out different than I expected. The guy was a bowhunter who owned seventeen acres that bordered that chunk of public land and just wanted to know what it was like in there, because he hadn't gone in yet.

So we struck up a conversation and came to an agreement that he'd let me park at his place and access the public through his ground if i'd keep him updated out on the deer activity and maybe hunt with him a little bit. So we became friends pretty quickly, because at that time I didn't have kids, and I scouted and hunted a lot, so I was out there a lot while he struggled with hunting in general, you know,

kind of just from a lack of experience. I quickly found that he could fix anything and was always working on something. You know, the kind of person I'm referring to. He's always working on a classic car rebuild or something on his house or whatever. He's not the kind of guy to sit around drinking beers on his deck for hours at a time. If you get my drift, well, Scott sort of semi retired a few years ago. He still works some, but he has more free time than

he used to. This means he has more time to take on crazy projects. For example, a couple of weeks ago, he called me and asked me if I could give him a hand with something. Now. That's something was lifting a nineteen twenty seven player piano over on its side in his living room so he could replace a bunch of parts and get it running. Now, if you're not going to transport yourself back to prohibition days to run a speak easy for the folks looking to catch a buzz,

but stay off the police radar. I have no idea why you'd need a functional player piano. But it doesn't matter what I think about it, though, because it wasn't my jam. So I went to Scott's place, where I met up with his son and his son in law and some other dude who I don't know. Together, we could barely move that thing without breaking everything, including the important parts of our bodies that allow us to stand

up straight. Seriously, the cheap plastic shit we fill our houses with these days just doesn't compare to the build on that stupid piano. The whole thing was made to last, and with that durability comes a lot of weight. Five grown men who are you know, in pretty good shape could barely move it. What was worse is that we knew Scott would get the whole thing fixed and up and running, and then we'd have to lift it and hold it up while he bolted the legs back on,

which was way worse than our initial job. Scott was pleased with himself and is off on other projects, and honestly, I kind of admire him for it. He keeps busy

and he doesn't half assed stuff. The work he does on random things doesn't appeal to me in the least, but he doesn't phone anything in and in one way I can relate to him on that which is you know, in this one thing which you're probably going to guess, which is my golf swing, ha ha, just kidding, it's deer hunting, or more specifically for this episode setting up

season long stand sites. I qualify it that way because we often talk about going mobile, whether you know that's with a saddle or a lightweight hang on, and guys like me in the industry often forget how important it is to go out in the summer and hang stands it will stay up until the season closes, which is

a strategy that a lot of hunters use. Now, the emphasis we put on the mobile game and thinking through our setups is important, but it also ignores the reality that that style of hunting benefits greatly from the surprise aspect. I know that's not a secret, but it is like the number one reason to go that route. It's also

just not a great route for everyone. I was reminded of this recently when I was laying in bed trying to sleep and a thought occurred to me that has occurred to me a lot since the end of April. There's a stand that I hung over in northern Wisconsin for the rut in this pine tree, and I'm very excited about that spot. I've already talked about it a few times. But in that pine tree, I cut a lot of branches off to get where I need to be. Those branches or where those branches used to be are

now I'm sure going to be a sappy nightmare. I need to remedy that, because I hate climbing into a stand and getting covered in sap. I hate leaning against the tree and sticking to it. I don't know what I'm going to do about it, but I think I'm gonna get some cheap fabric, maybe some felt or something, and use it as a buffer against those spots where I cut off the limbs and they're gonna be all sappy. I know I need to do this, but I haven't yet,

and that bothers me. Everything about that stand is good to go already, but that one detail. The trail into it is cut and trimmed and tact and it's money. The shooting lanes are cut and ready to go. The whole thing is going to be so fun to sit in November, but not unless I address this one stupid detail. And if I don't. I know I will regret it and I won't hunt that stand or that spot the way I need to, and that would be stupid. It

could very well cost me a deer. I know this because I've sabotaged myself a lot when it comes to tree stand setups. In fact, this often unacknowledged reality is one of the reasons that pop up blinds and box blinds have become so popular in deer hunting. They're just easier in general once they're set up. They just don't

require as much attention to detail. But with blinds, you give up the experience of feeling like you're a part of the woods and are meeting the deer at a level where they can have a good chance of busting you, if that makes any sense. Now, I know you can get busted in blinds, but I also know it's a different type of sit than being in a tree stand.

There's a little more at stake. So anyway, you probably have a few stands you set up for bow or gun season or both that are sitting in your garage right now, just waiting for you to mess with them and make plans to get them set up. The thing that gets a lot of us at this stage is that the idea we have in our heads is often not the reality we meet in the woods. A few years ago this became very evident to me when I drove down to southwest Wisconsin to help set up some

ladder stands in my buddy's property. Now, I'm not a big ladder stand guy in general, because they're so not very portable, and I don't like sitting spots that get hunted super hard, which is something that seems to happen a lot with ladder stands. But his property is right for a few season long setups, so we set out with a plan when we got to each spot to wrestle those giant, heavy ladder stands in place. We ended

up making concessions on every spot. You need the right tree for a big ladder stand, and nature doesn't often deliver perfect trees in the spots you really want to hunt.

It was a huge pain in the ass, and we ended up mostly going for trees that were suitable for putting a stand in them, then hiding a stand and a hunter, or positioning a hunter for a really good shot in a different tree that would be better for the setup, or at least better for the spot worse than that, those big ladder stands that all of the deer know about are hard to hide when the leaves fall, which means you take a spot that should be really

good and you put a very noticeable stand there that's going to stick out for a lot of different reasons as the season progresses, so you actually get easier to pick off as the pressure builds in a single area, which is a good recipe for clunker hunts because you have two things going against you there. Bigger hang ons are a slightly different story, but can encourage us to fall into the same traps. The truth with this stuff is that it's best to spend some real time thinking

these setups through. Too often we pick a spot eyeball a tree fifteen yards away, and then set a stand up to face the most likely shot location, and we call it good. Well, we might also trim every possible thing that could deflect an arrow there, which might do us a favor but also might make us easier to get spotted better. Yet, it's pretty common these days to take a season long spot and make sure it has a camera overlooking it, which means more human presence, even

if it's a cell camera. Now I realize I'm making a good case for not setting up season long stands now, because after say, I don't know, a couple of weeks of bo season, they might you know, not be worthless, but they might be getting there. But they don't have to. I think the first way to make a stand site better is to position the stands so it isn't facing where the deer are most likely to be. Being able to hide behind the tree, at least partially is a

big benefit, it really is. I almost never set anything up to face the likely travel spots of deer because I don't want to be hanging out there on their side when I am most likely going to have to move. I don't know why this is so common, but I see it all the time. I have one buddy who is scared of heights and who is also one of

the worst and hangers I've ever seen. Every one of his stands is about ten feet off the ground and always facing the open field or food plot or logging road or pond or whatever he thinks the deer will use. He also gets busted a lot. He's one of those people who thinks deer have a sixth sense because they're always seeing him. But the truth is, he just really kind of stinks that setting up stands, and he isn't

hunting super unpressured deer. It's pretty simple. So what else can you do to give yourself a chance while not sabotaging yourself? For starters? Remove any and all extra stuff you don't need. If you don't need a shooting rail on your ladder stand, remove it. The more metal you have hanging around you, the more likely you are to bump a bowl, limb, or a backpack buckle or something

into it. Simple is good here. If you happen to climb into your stand while you're cutting, shooting lanes, or just generally setting it up, Listen that slight pop your ladder makes under your waist, or the clank of a d ring that helps keep two sections of ladder together is not going to seem like a big deal in July or August, But it's a different story on a

calm morning when it's twenty seven degrees out. If you have a way to tighten things up and shore up anything that might make extra metal on metal noise, do it now when you're in your stand and running a pole saw or directing a buddy on the ground with a saw. Take some time also to imagine how realistic you need to be about shooting lanes. It's easy to go way overboard in August with this task, and that

will bite you in the ass in November. At twenty yards, you should be able to shoot through a basketball size shooting window all day long if you need to now. While I wouldn't recommend only giving yourself that option, the other end of the spectrum is to cut everything down to give yourself wide open shooting options. You gotta find a happy medium. Give yourself a few windows on the best trails or into the field or food plot, but don't open things up so much that you're bound to

get picked off. This is a lot easier to say than it is to do, but it's very important to think about now. I also like to envision where the deer are likely to travel and what my shot options will be when they go one way on the trail versus the opposite. Now, you might set up and have a nice quartering away shot at eighteen yards when they go down the best trail, like you hope they will, but they often don't do what we hope they will.

Can you shoot him if he comes down the trail from the opposite direction, or will that nice quartering away shot turn into something that's totally iffy and quartering to a little too much? How do you remedy that situation in the summer without opening yourself up too much? How much of the tree or neighboring trees can you leave in place to give yourself some cover in the front and behind and below you? Leaving cover behind you might

be the easiest. In front, Well, we've already kind of discussed that cutting shooting lanes, but what about below your stand platform. We don't think about this a lot, but the deers that are most likely to bust you are your non target deer. They get close enough to get a whiff of where you placed your hand on the ladder or are you touched a dead fall on the way to your stand. Those deer they get a little cautious off of some olfactory red flag, are the same

ones that eventually look up. A deer that has a clear view of you there, especially at KG dough is one that's going to lose her mind and turn your hunt into a snort fest. It often won't be the buck that just has his destination in mind and plans to walk right on through it. Last night, it'll be the dough with two fawnds who comes through twenty minutes before him, who realizes you haven't done a good job

with your stand setup. So, besides addressing some of these common mistakes, we all make what is a good strategy here? I think it's to give yourself time. Too often we go, well, my cousin isn't working today, so we're gonna meet up on the family farm and get six stands set up, and hump three stands into the day. You know you're kind of done. You're ready to go belly up at the local watering hole for a birder and a beer and consider it a job not maybe well done, but

done well enough. Maybe I don't know, but it's not though. You need to give yourself time to get this stuff right. I'm way more into hanging maybe two stands a day, but doing it right than to try to get a whole summer's worth of work done on a Saturday. Having to rush through anything because you're almost out of time or you're just ready to quit working is a great way to do just the basics, but not the real detail work that makes tree stand setups really hum for

the whole season. The thing here is that even if you're a really busy person, we are talking roughly the same amount of time, but broken up into manageable chunks. Instead of rushing through six set up in a day, try to cover out, you know, parts of three days in the next few weeks to get a couple stands a session set up, you know, set up the way

you really want them set up. Now, the last thing I'll say on this, which our mustachioed friend would wholeheartedly approve of, is you might want to make a list not only of each stand site and what you want to accomplish, but really everything about each site that requires summer work, the entrance and exit trails, the trimming, the lifelines you want to hang so you could hunt safely, whatever it is. A checklist will help you set things up the way you need to and follow through with

a good detailed plan. I know this might sound like overkill, but here's the deal. It's easy to half ask this stuff in the summer and call it good. But we all know the feeling of getting into a stand that isn't set up to our best abilities, even if that stand is ninety three percent of the way there and it's just a sappy mess that makes the other seven

percent untenable. You know, we also know the feeling of making too much noise or sticking out like a sore thumb when the first group of domes starts to work their way through. We know what it's like to get this stuff even a few percent wrong, because that's all the advantage the deer need to show us. We are amateurs and they are not. Do not do that to yourself. Think about your setups and what could go wrong, and then get ahead of as much of that stuff as

you can. Give yourself time work through the possible problems and eliminate them. And then come back next week because I'm going to talk about a trail camera strategy that you can implement now to help yourself kill bucks in November. Whether you're a bow hunter, a gun hunter, or both. That's it. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which has brought to you by First Light. As always, thank you so much for listening

and for all your support. Truly appreciate it so thank you for that. If you need some more hunting advice, maybe you're taking a road trip with a family and you want to listen to some new podcasts I don't know. Maybe you're grilling out, you need a new recipe. You can head on over to them meeteater dot com and find all of that stuff and a hell of a lot more