What kind of deer stand spacing is too close, how effected by surroundings?

[jcarlin]

Man it's dead around here. I'm of a mind to try to see if we can resurrect it at least the old group a bit. And since this is on the brain as I went to move a stand and high winds have a tree leaning on it, and that the large tree that I've used to bridge the mill race was moved by flooding the other night, I have some planning to do.

My property and scrub public land behind my place, across a small, but before the state road, adds up to all of 4 acres of woods and fields (surrounded by much more of same) in a fairly rural and wooded area.

I currently have 3 stands in that spacing. concentrated in really a 1 acre portion of it that's back off my house a ways, but not easily visible from the road. They're on 3 different banks of 2 creeks, but they're all set up for different wind, creek, and approaches. If I actually had 3 hunters in them, they could just about all make eye contact with each other. The more centrally located of the 3 I think I'm relocating all of 30 yards this year, and one may get pulled much closer to the house. That last is the most visible from the road in late fall, but normally traffic's whizzing by at 50mph. There's a bridge on a parallel road that's under construction, and with the detour they added a temporary traffic signal. I don't know how that's goign to affect the deer pattern itself, but it backs up far enough that people who used to be going by at speed are now often bored looking out the window at the creek. It's not the only place I hunt, but it is my convenient "i've got a couple of hours" location and as it's got good numbers of deer moving through, I like it a lot.

I'm bringing this up, partly to share, and partly because it's always amused me to picture a hunter coming across the set up just shaking their head.
The thing is though, with experience of hunting the same place for a few years in a row, you start to realize how they each make sense.

I still don't know if I can re-set that tree as a crossing.

Get ready gentlemen, the season is coming.

[bowhunter75richard]

I might not be seeing this entire scenario in an understanding way, but if these are rifle stands, it appears that the whole area can almost be covered with one centrally located stand. If these are bow stands, it sounds too complicated to be pictured in the mind to come up with usable information. Sorry for the no help, I guess !

[PigHunter]

Some thoughts:

1) Are you the only hunter on the property? If so, stand separation for safety is not an issue.

2) If you have other hunters, 4 acres is pretty small for that much scent and disturbance. Any deer roaming the place at night will quickly realize the increased human traffic and will adjust their movement pattern.

3) Can you limit yourself to just one stand? Perhaps it will also limit the number of days for optimal hunting but it would reduce your impact.

4) Set aside some of the property for bedding and leave it alone. Plant cover or hing-cut trees if possible.

5) Use baiting if legal, otherwise plant a food plot.

6) As far as staying hidden from the road, are you able to use a ground blind instead? You can hide those from the road behind a brush pile

Happy hunting!

[jcarlin]

The archery only info definitely would have been useful.

On a simpler note, and not having to be in my specifics, my opinion is that they all work for different conditions, where one or more of them wouldn't work at all in certain conditions.

I was putting it more as a question certainly. I wanted to see where discussions go. I know I've seen guys saying that they couldn't hunt a 5 acre lease because the wind was wrong and they only have one or two stands in the thing.
Now my terrain in that small space is surprisingly varied. Mulitple fords, one small and one large creek, some gradual banks and some steep, some open lawn and field, some thick brush, a couple acres of woods. Some days deer come under the bridge from the large wooded parkland upstream, some days they cross the road.

My thought is that in that smallish space, just a few hundred yards on a side, and irregular at that, there are a lot of options depending on conditions.

It's also only me. With my son being limited to the one location that can manage both of us.

Area floods periodically, so a ground blind would have to keep coming and going, which would be a disturbance in it's own right.

They're also all set up so that I can get into them quickly and quietly. Realize I'm a working guy, so if any of those individual stands gets used twice in the same week it's an anomaly.

[dewman]

The timing of deer sighting would be my deciding factor with close proximity stands. Even if eventually the same deer would work their way in front of every stand every time, their timing might put them there too early or too late depending on the stands purpose. As in, whether the deer are moving food to bed(morning)or bed to food. (Evening) Also, how the deer move during the rut when an all day sit is feasible. This is the stand I would put close to bedding area and hunt more open areas (food) till I saw some chasing. My late season stands are set from memory of where I've seen deer moving in the past without giving food/cover much thought. As in, if I see deer every December out my back window then come thanksgiving I'm putting a stand up there. I would skip putting up a stand where the casual passerby(thief) could see it as if I were that observer I would say to myself, "hhmmm, that must be a great spot that they would put a stand up in plain sight." Or "I bet I could get $50 for that stand."