It’s the 2024 deer season and I’m walking into a piece of Kentucky public land. I’ve got my deer stand on my back, a pin dropped on OnX from a quick scan the night before, and a headlamp that’s fighting a losing battle with my own breath. It was one of those cold, crisp mornings where every exhale hangs in front of your face like fog.
I found the spot I had pinned fairly easily and then I did what most of us do in that situation. I looked around, picked what looked like the best tree, and started my ascent.
If you hunt the way I do, that scene will sound familiar. Tree stand placement is where those hunts are won or lost, and it’s the decision most hunters spend the least time on. You can nail the map work, beat everybody to the parking lot, and still blow the sit because of the tree you picked.
So here’s what this article is really about. Choosing a tree stand location is two separate decisions, not one. The stand location and the actual tree.
The tree I picked before daylight
When the sun started breaking I could see frost on the ground. That’s the first thing I remember. The second thing I remember is looking over my shoulder and seeing nothing behind me but sky. Zero back cover. I was roughly eighteen feet up a tree that looked fine in the dark but once it started breaking daylight I quickly realized I stuck out like a sore thumb.
I knew it was a problem the second I saw it. I also did what a lot of hunters do, which is sit there and hope nothing picked me off. I’d already made the noise of hanging the stand. I didn’t want to make more and possible risk spooking deer. So I told myself if I stayed still enough it wouldn’t matter.
It took about twenty minutes to find out it did matter. Two does came down the trail from the direction I thought I’d see deer movement. The stand location was right. That’s what makes this one sting. They were still seventy-five yards out when the lead doe stopped and locked on me. I hadn’t moved. She didn’t care. She stared for about a minute, stomped, blew, and both of them ran off the way they’d come.
It was at that moment I knew I had to make a move. Not because I’d figured out the tree problem yet, but because I knew if the very first deer to come down the trail was able to see me that easily it wasn’t going to get any better. I pulled my stand, walked to a tree I could now clearly see had plenty of cover, and started my ascent again.
The rest of that morning was one of the better public land sits I had that hunting season. I sat until noon, and several does and young bucks came through within bow range during that time. Better yet, not one of them knew I was in the world. I didn’t see a mature buck during that hunt but I’m confident the rest of that sit would’ve gone a lot differently had I stayed in the first tree.
Why the checklist doesn’t help you at first light
Most of the information out there on stand placement gives you the same list. Wind, access, cover, bedding, food, funnels, thermals, shooting lanes. All of it’s important. Where this information falls short is it doesn’t tell you what to do when it’s an hour before daylight and your walking into an area you’ve never been before for a hang and hunt.
That’s the situation plenty of hunters who travel and hunt public ground find themselves in every season. If you’re hunting your own farm with a dozen stands pre hung and access trails mowed in, you can run the whole checklist. If you’re in the situation I was in you can’t. We’re standing in the woods with a pin we think is a good spot, and we have to make a call.
So here’s how I break it down now. Two decisions, in order.
Decision one: Tree Stand Location
Tree stand location is a question of where deer movement is likely to occur during the specific time of year. When you’re hunting somewhere new this is the part you can do with a map, and honestly most hunters are already decent at it.
For that November hunt, I’d dropped the pin on the toe of a ridge overlooking a likely creek crossing in the timber. Based on the map, deer moving through that bottom had one easy place to cross the creek, and the toe of the ridge put me above it. I’d read that right, and the deer movement that morning proved it. Two does, then the parade after I moved, all came through that crossing within fifty yards of where the pin sat.
The tree stand location was only half of decision one, though. The other half is wind and access, and those two get decided together, the night before, not in the parking lot. I checked the forecasted wind direction before I went to bed and planned my access to minimize the chances of spooking deer on the way in. Which side of the pin I’d approach from, where my scent would be drifting the whole way in, and which side of the crossing I could set up on and stay downwind of the deer activity.
If the forecasted wind had been wrong for that spot, the answer wasn’t a different route. It was a different stand location altogether. A spot you can’t access with the right wind isn’t the perfect tree stand location for that hunt.
The walk-in adds to it. Fresh tracks in the trail, a rub you catch in the headlamp, whether the air on your face agrees with what the forecast promised. All of that either confirms the stand location or tells you to shift plans.
What the map can’t tell you is which tree to climb. It’ll get you to within a stone’s throw of the right one. That’s it. And here’s the thing I had to learn. Getting the spot right doesn’t make the tree right.
Decision two: the perfect tree
The perfect tree is the question of whether deer can see or smell you once they’re there.
In the dark, a tree might look good but it’s almost impossible to tell what kind of cover you’ll have once for in it. Trust me, it matters. When I hung that first stand I was looking for a tree I could climb, with a decent lane to shoot. I never looked at the back cover though.
Here’s the important factors I check now and the order I check them.
Wind
The wind comes first, and I’m not talking about the forecasted direction. I’m talking about the actual air moving past you in that spot, checked with milkweed or just your face. Yea, you planned around the forecast the night before, but timber does strange things to wind, and morning thermals can pull it somewhere the app never predicted. If the air is drifting toward the trail, stop right there. No tree fixes that problem, and you’re back to decision one picking a new spot. Every check after this one only matters if the wind passes.
Back Cover
Next is back cover. Stand at the base of the tree and look up at where you’d be sitting. Is there anything behind it? Branches, a second trunk, a cedar, leaves that are still hanging on. If there’s nothing but sky, keep looking. A deer coming down that trail sees a shape it’s never seen before, and it doesn’t need to know what you are to decide it doesn’t like you.
The science backs that up. The University of Georgia Deer Lab has studied whitetail vision for thirty years, and the short version is that deer don’t see detail well but they pick up movement and outlines extremely well, especially in low light. Their eyes process motion about four times faster than ours. What they’re bad at is picking a still object out of a cluttered background. That’s the whole argument for back cover. You’re not trying to be invisible. You’re trying to not be a silhouette.
Distance & Shooting Lanes
Then check the trail distance. Can you shoot to where the deer will actually walk, not where you want them to walk? If the tree with good cover sits thirty five yards off the trail and you’re comfortable to twenty five, that’s not your tree.
Shooting lanes come last, and I put them last on purpose. Lanes are the one thing you can fix after you’re up the tree. You can trim a lane. You can’t trim in back cover.
I want to be honest about what this costs you. The tree with the best cover is almost never the tree with the best view. You’ll see less, you’ll have fewer lanes, and deer will show up closer than you expected because you couldn’t see them coming. That’s the price, and I’ll pay it every time now, because a great view of deer that have already spotted you isn’t worth much.
Why I’ll move now, and why it took me so long
Should you climb down and move in the middle of a morning hunt? I used to say no. The noise, the scent you leave, the time it eats. I figured once you were up, you were committed.
That morning changed my answer. The damage from a bad tree isn’t one blown doe. It’s every deer that comes through for the rest of the sit, and in a funnel that’s a lot of deer. Two does had already told me the tree was wrong. Sitting there would have just let the rest of them tell me the same thing.
Yes, moving costs you. I lost twenty minutes of prime morning light. I made noise hanging a stand twice. I walked across the trail I was hunting. All of that is real. But I had the whole rest of the morning in front of me, and the second tree gave me all of it. The first one was going to give me nothing.
Here’s the rule I use now. If deer pick you out before you’ve moved, the tree is wrong. Not the spot. The tree. Fix the tree.
The order when hunting somewhere new
If you only read one section, read this one.
- Spot first, from the map, the night before. Where’s a mature buck likely going to be, what the wind’s forecast to do, and which route gets you in without your scent covering the spot. If the wind doesn’t work for the pin, change the pin, not the plan.
- Confirm on the walk-in. Tracks, sign, wind. Shift the stand location if the ground disagrees with the map.
- Hang in the dark if you have to, but know it’s a guess. Pick the tree that looks the best based on what you can make out in the dark. That’s all you can do.
- Re-check the tree at first light. Back cover, trail distance, wind, lanes. In that order.
- Move if it fails. Early. Before the deer tell you.
What I’d give up first if they conflict: the view. Then the lanes. Then a few yards of trail distance. What I won’t give up anymore is wind or back cove.
One more important point. This is for the traveling hunter or someone who is constantly hunting new areas of public they’ve never been before. If you’ve got several days to hunt a piece, hang the first morning in the dark and plan on moving. Treat the first hunt as a scouting mission. You’ll pick a better tree for morning two than any amount of map work would give you.
That November morning I did everything right based on the map and was picked off by two does anyway. The spot was never the problem.
Pick the spot with the map. Pick the tree with your eyes.