Sitting up and waiting for deer

Heym SR20

Well-Known Member
Gentlemen,

I have often sat down and waited for deer to appear in likely spots, but I have never been successful. I have even waited up to a couple of hours. But normally if nothing has appeared after about an hour I move to somewhere else.

Piece of ground I am now stalking has a lot of leaf litter and thus its noisy, and noisy even just to move into position. Am I giving it long enough? How long do those who regularly use high seats etc allow, and indeed if you sitting up till last light do you go into the seat 30 minutes before or two or three hours before?

Thanks
 
Personally I enjoy sitting and watching, having all th wildlife go about their business around me without knowing I'm there. I've sat out for hours and not seen anything but I've also shot deer within 30 mins of arriving. If it's gonna be noisy getting to the seat I like at least an hour to let things settle down. If waiting for last light I will get there a couple of hours early as its the peace and quiet and seeing the countryside change as the sun sets. I then generally leave at the time I don't feel comfortable trying to track a deer which is usually before legal shooting time ends.
 
The sun goes off the trees before the open ground. After sunset the open is warmer than the trees. The deer come out into the more comfortable open ground to graze as temps drop. Usually befor last light the movement begins. Singles start from about one hour before dark, groups tend to be that wee bit later. Sitting on open ground waiting unless a definite wind direction can spread your scent through 360 degrees as the drafts follow different eddies so while you think you may be unseen you are scented and deer never appear. Warm air rises so always try to be uphill from the kill area. Where possible employ a high seat. That bit of elevation tends to lift your ground scene up above the floor drafts. High seat stalking is akin to coarse fishing, always remember the deer are there and you need patience to get the bite. Feeding and grazing they tend to move around their area so eventually they will get to you.
 
In winter I stay in seat till I'm cold in the morning then go walkabout and after lunch walkabout and end up in a seat in the evening when I decide to leave the seat I always give it the 5 min rule before departing Suprising how many get shot in that last 5 mins in the seat !
norma

The deer seem to appear just when we stalkers (humans ) have had enough ..just hold on that little bit more
 
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I use both high seats and sitting at ride junctions with my Idleback or a low stool. I aim to be set-up well before first light and stay for about two hours.
Two hours is about the max for me. In the evening I aim to be set-up about one hour before sunset. That usually gives me about an hour and a half of shootable light, depending upon conditions.
In the winter staying warm is an issue. In summer its staying awake.:old:
 
I generally will get to a spot about two hours before last light and sit. I know the areas well and where the game trails are. I've shot several deer and foxes using this method. You have to be patient and have good binos, good hearing, a good seat and a good field of view. There are some areas where it is impossible to stalk and watching deer and how nervous they are made me realise that they already heard you 80+m ahead.

Want further proof, then check out what I filmed on my lone wolf sit and climb combo last 10 minutes of light

 
HEYM are you a smoker?

A strange question, I always believed, and have yet to be proved wrong,that if they can smell your smoke they can smell you. Having smoked a pipe forever in high seats and at ground level,just find the wind direction first,in fact in a lot of broadleaf woodland deer get used to smoke from brash burning.
For me High seat until two hours after first light then stalk,evening in seat two hours before sunset then go when light is failing. At this time of year don't forget the 10am to 2.30pm rule,I have always shot the most roe does in that window.
 
A strange question, I always believed, and have yet to be proved wrong,that if they can smell your smoke they can smell you. Having smoked a pipe forever in high seats and at ground level,just find the wind direction first,in fact in a lot of broadleaf woodland deer get used to smoke from brash burning.
For me High seat until two hours after first light then stalk,evening in seat two hours before sunset then go when light is failing. At this time of year don't forget the 10am to 2.30pm rule,I have always shot the most roe does in that window.

Do you find that between 10am and 2:30 pm is the most productive time for stalking or are you refering to using a high seat please?
 
The trouble is, that spots you may consider 'likely' are not necessarily the spots that the deer actually use!
You need to look at the areas more closely for indirect sign of deer to establish where they do actually go. Just because an area looks nice to you, it might not to a deer! Deer are generally creatures of habit. Even fallow which seem randomly transient are random, but within a general area and favour specific places. You just need to learn where they are! Try to think like a deer! Deer need three things really;
1. Shelter
2. Food
3. security
These will clearly vary from day to day because of weather, wind direction, land useage, public access, etc for the shelter and security. Food is clearly seasonal.
So consider this before you head out. Where is a sheltered spot with a source of food that is likely to be undisturbed? How can I get to it without disturbing it?
You are now beginning to think like a deer!;)
Next you should consider that deer are used to ground based predators. It's a game of 'who sees who' first and they have evolved to be quite good at this! We may better their eyes with our optics, but we cannot begin to compare our ears and noses to theirs which are highly tuned! We therefore should avoid being on the ground as we will often lose the game, although the challenge is clearly fun and what drives many of us! An elevated position suddenly gives you a massive advantage as they are not looking for you up there!
As well as looking for signs of deer impact such as tracks/slots/fewmets/browse lines/fraying/wallows/bark stripping/couches/broken stems/grazed areas/etc... you can also use stealth cameras to good effect. Not only do they let you know what is there, you can also build up a pattern of when it is there. Before shelling out a load of money on expensive high seats, it is worth getting a small portable one such as a Panther which you can use to test an area. Quite often, you will sit up it and quickly realise that it should actually be somewhere else close by! So move it and try again! Once you've established a good site you can then consider something more permanent. Getting to a fixed point is often the biggest challenge which you elude to in your post. Concealed entry is essential and wind direction is a critical consideration. If you get it right, then you can often shoot deer almost instantly. I recently shot 2 fallow within about 10 seconds of climbing into a tower! I've regularly shot deer using the ladder of a seat as a rest as they are already there on arrival. Doe boxes are also a great aid and can be easily constructed from a few wooden pallets on their sides and some wooden stakes. Make the stakes slightly higher and you can even fit a sloping roof!
I hope my rambling are useful and make some sense? I think to summarise though, you can't just expect the deer to come to you! You need to find them.
Good luck.
MS:)
 
On one farm I have found being tucked in to a hedge with the wind in my face has worked in my favour,
granted they have been Muntjac but 16 from 21 have been shot like that. The other 5 were from high seats.
4/5 were spotted from a high seat but were not coming too me so I bailed out and got my self into a shooting position. Muntjac don't hang around so I deal with each one with how I feel it is moving, if there is a doe around then you can be a bit more forward in moving into position.
3 others from a different farm were off sticks with me waiting on a trail, half of the Fallow I have shot have been while tucked up on a ride waiting for them to cross a ride or tree plantation the others from high seats.

Where my seat are sited I will wait back 100 yds 15/20 mins just to see if any thing moves, then slide along the hedge and wait 1 1/2 2 hrs max.

Tim.243
 
I always find that is at just the point that you are completely demoralised thinking this is stupid, wrong time, wrong place for a seat, too noisy approach, wind in the wrong direction etc etc is when 30mins later the deer turn up (or don't!). I always stay a strict time in the seat and make sure I leave to foot stalk when I planned to. Either they are there or they are not and try not to dwell on how I should have done things different but I will select which seat or glade to use depending on wind direction and what I plan to do after leaving the seat or where I am set up on sticks.

In the afternoon I will normally spend the the last hour and half/ two hours in a seat or on sticks
 
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I think it really depends on the population density and movement patterns of the deer in the area (and that can change seasonally).

One farm I stalk on has a very dense population and with a couple choke points where loads move through to pass between two woods. I expect to see one every other time I wait out.

Another farm has one particular spot where bucks almost always appear in the last hour of light in mid and late summer, but you never see a deer at any other time of year.

And you've been to one farm with me where I had seen a deer every single time I waited out at that spot, but where I've never been successful waiting out anywhere else.
 
The advice I was given a long time ago was to walk in the morning and sit in the afternoon. As per a couple of earlier comments, I find it very hard on some bits of ground to pick a spot to sit and watch. I am still surprised when I stop and sit and watch at any time of the day, how soon some wild life appears - not necessarily a deer.

Regards

JCS
 
The number one thing is picking the right stand for the time of day and deer movement, and the wind suiting it. If not, go to your second choice, where the wind is in your favor for the direction you expect the deer to come.

If I am moving into a stand, ground blind, or just a sitting spot against a tree in a hardwood forest, I try to walk in a few steps at a time, casually, not stealthy - trying to sound more like a squirrel rustling for nuts or a deer walking in. Then I want to get still enough for the squirrels and birds to come back out and go about their business. Often, I will have a pair of does, or a buck on the prowl, come by so soon after I settle in that I know they had to have heard me, and probably came to check it out.

I once had a red tail hawk light on a branch beside my wood platform in a creek bottom. He sat there and studied me for ten minutes, at maybe 8 feet distance, before gliding along his way. As soon as he left, the squirrels came back out, and within a few minutes, two deer emerged from thick cover, where they had been assessing the reason for silence.
 
I aim to get into a seat half an hour before morning twilight starts, and wait for up to a couple of hours after it ends, depending on the weather/wind/season etc.

Then stalk on foot for a couple of hours if I've been unsuccessful from the seat; then if still unsuccessful, knock it on the head.
 
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Deer stalking either on foot or from a high seat is quite unpredictable. The deer don't read the 'rules' book. I have spooked plenty when conditions where in my favour, and ambushed plenty who were downwind from me, close in, and with me being quite viseable. You just never know, and I keep getting surprises.

What I have worked out, also from speaking to other stalkers, is that the success rate of most stalkers is around 1:4 or 1:5, which averages out to say 12 hours of stalking/sitting up for one cull, so with a typical stalking session lasting 2.5 to 3 hours.
That figure ('On average it takes approx. 12 hours to shoot one deer in a high-deer density environment') is also endorsed by the BDS Deer Manager course instructors, certainly when I did that course - which was also attended by some well-known stalkers and authors- nobody disputed that benchmark.

Example: I work in a team of four on one Estate where our main brief is to reduce Muntjac. Working out the man-hours spent on site and looking at the cull achieved, the final cull after one season of just 4 Muntjac seemed very disappointing, but it was spot on for 12 man-hours per cull. It seemed hard work and a lot of effort - but perfectly average.

As far as your question is concerned, I would try to be in position about one hour before sunset which will give you just 1.5 hours in which you have to try to sit still, don't fidget and plan thing so you don't need to come out of the high seat for a wee!
A previous poster rightly remarked that the high seat needs to be in a position where deer is known to travel or gather/feed, so make sure there are plenty of signs of browsing, fraying, tracks and racks, backed-up by trail cam footage, and there is some food they are attracted to at that time of year.

My own stalking is recreational and I like the challenge and know that, eventually, I will bag one. For example I stalk a small woodland which I estimate to be 400 yards x 400 yards. What makes it difficult is that is on a 25% slope, very overgrown, with a well-used footpath at the top and and a village at the bottom. It holds Roe and Muntjac. In the last 2 weeks I have stalked it 4 times, shot nothing on each occasion, but spotted on Stalk 1) 9 deer; 2) 1 deer; 3) 4 deer; 4) 2 deer.
Some of those deer spotted where in the same -unlikely-spot on each occasion. On closer investigation, yesterday afternoon, I discovered lots of windfalls from a crab-apple tree where I spotted deer each time, on a spot where I have stalked pass dozens of times a year, but never really noticed that tree. So the plan for this afternoon is to settle down on a higher, overlooking position, some 80 yards from that tree, with the wind in my favour, and with a safe backstop, at around 3PM (Sunset 4PM) I think it is fair to say that my changes this afternoon are now better than 50%.

So survey your land, spent time on the ground, observe, think, remember, deduct, plan and execute.
Good luck and enjoy the stalking!
 
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