The importance of first time sits

[SonofUlam]

Best thread so far, I can't wait to try these ideas out!

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[Tennhunter3]

My best bucks were on first time sits. Got a beautiful 8 on the 2nd sit same stand a week later.

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[oldrank]

I hunt both small and big propertys... Sometimes you do only have a few options on a particular spot. I just spread out thin to more local public or try to think outside the box.[/quote]

What do you guys consider a small parcel? I have 3 private land parcels I hunt.. 10 , 7.5, n 13 acres. R u hunting anything that small ? Finding anything private over 20 acres around my area is getting very rare.

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[Bayshorebuck8]

Such a great thread awsome info going on in here

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[mainebowhunter]

Great thread!! Fascinating to read all the different tactics used. Love hunting the midwest. There is nothing like it. Live and hunt the Northeast because its where my family is and I want my kids to grow to know and love their grandparents.

Here in Maine, in season scouting and staying mobile is the name of the game. We also hunt very aggressive. I listened to one of the podcasts with Josh Beamen http://www.spreaker.com/user/thehuntingbeast/hb-podcast-episode-6-whitetail-tactics-w...At 43:00 he mentioned a guy who was killing mature deer strategically placing his trail cams and really running cams hard until he killed the 180" he was after. This really resonates with the way we hunt and use cameras here in Maine. Deer numbers are low, mature buck numbers are low. So, for the most part, mature bucks are 3.5yr olds. This whole season, I never got 130" deer on camera (in Maine). Thats running 15+ cameras in different locations. Thats starting in August and going through December. Out of our hunting group, total, running 50+ cameras in totally different locations, we got 2 deer over 130" on camera this season.

We hunt 95% timber. Bedding areas are going to be thick places inside 1000 acres of timber. 0% AG. So the first sit in is probably going to be my best sit, however, in the past 5yrs, none of the bucks I killed were on the first sit. Mainly, because the buck or bucks I was hunting were not there. Sometimes, they were a 1mile + away at a different food source. Buck I killed this year was on the 9th sit in that area. Killed him right in a bedding area. My entrance and exit is very good.

Once the guns start blazing, my but is on plane to the great state of Kansas!!

Again, great thread. I think the bottom line to all of this is....HARD WORK. There really are no short cuts. You either ARE putting the time in, HAVE put the time in OR you WILL BE putting the time in if you want to kill big deer. Like many have said, there is no magic pixie dust.

[Ridgerunner7]

Phenomenal and very important information. I'd say roughly 70 to 80% of my bucks were killed on the first sit. I can only think of a few spots that I hunt that will allow for multiple sets in a season. All six of my bucks this year came on the first sit also. Some of the spots have traditionally heated up during various times of the year. It took me years and years of hunting it to pin down the time frame with the highest percentage time frames for success. Some of those spots are easier to predict then others, like buck beds obviously. Others take time and experience.

Also of note my two biggest and oldest bucks of the year came from a first set but I had prior low impact sits in the area where I could observe movement near the actual kill tree location. I was able to hunt sporadically in an observation stand and move in when it really started getting action. Both of those kills occurred because of quick relocation to that area from observed movement. Sometimes, especially in rut finals your window of opportunity can be very small and it can vary slightly year-to-year. By me being able to observe the general movement in these particular locations I was able to capitalize the instant the action picked up.

Two of my other kills I relied solely on past seasons when those locations got good. I waited until the timing, wind, and temperature all looked good and moved in expecting to get a kill or at the very least an encounter . It doesn't always work out but if you can pack your season full of these type of high percentage sits the success will increase or at least it has for me.

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[JoeRE]

Yea, I think Dan was the first to say if a average hunter changes only one thing in how they hunt, being mobile and hunting a new spot on each sit is the #1 thing they can do to improve their success.

I completely agree with that. It is basically how I evolved as a bow hunter. 10 years ago I realized I was not seeing the big/older bucks like I should. I would go on 30+ bow hunts a year, have only a couple of encounters with big bucks typically during the rut and rarely seal the deal. I started doing a lot more mobile hunting and my success exploded. I have the stats to prove that in my hunting log. The last couple seasons I have gone to almost exclusively first time sits because I realized this, but over that 10 year period still only about 50-60% of my sits were first time - yet I killed almost all bucks in that 10 year period the first time in to a spot including a couple super old public land bucks. Note that a "new spot" might only mean a 50 yard stand site adjustment based on what you saw on a previous hunt...

I continue to learn more every year and tweak my hunting strategy but the biggest factor was that initial decision committing to being mobile combined with as Ridgerunner just said recognizing there is a "best time" to hunt every good spot you find, and trying to hit that best time.

I know there are still lots of hunters who for one reason or another want to use pre-hung sets, but if there is anything to be taken away from this thread it would be don't hang stands and trim shooting lanes 2 weeks before you want to hunt, and don't touch pre hung sets before the best possible time for that stand. Otherwise you are probably limiting yourself to encounters with non-local bucks during peak rut.

[Ridgerunner7]

Good call Joe. Pre set or pre scouted trees can still be awesome. The key is prepping them early ( Feb-April my preference )and then staying out until kill time. Element of surprise is in your favor and the bucks can't pattern you if you're not in there mucking it up.

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[JoeRE]

Yea, honestly I will probably never be a truly 100% mobile hunter. I still prefer to have an exact tree or ground set up picked out and prepped beforehand, I just make a point of doing the prep way before I intend to hunt it, preferably in the spring. I suspect most hunters are probably like me too. A few hunters seem to have an instinctive knack for picking the right spot the first time in, I do not.

When I go in w/o knowing exactly where I want to set up it tends to be a lousy hunt. Seems like I always set up 100 yards too far back, or go 100 yards too far. So I do the next best thing, focus on what I know I can do well. I stomp all over an area in the spring looking at all the angles. Even then it typically takes me a couple years of observations before I think I am dialed into exactly what deer are going to do in an area. By doing all that selection and prep work months earlier and keeping a distance with some low impact monitoring till the time is right a hunter can still have the element of complete surprise.

[Stanley]

Man if you talk to most good killers that first sit can be the ticket. I very seldom hunt the same set twice, but definitely will if the set can handle more than one sit. I killed my buck this year on the first sit "hang and hunt". My intentions were to leave the stand and hunt that set again though. But that pudden-head buck fell into my web.

[Edcyclopedia]

Good call Joe. Pre set or pre scouted trees can still be awesome. The key is prepping them early ( Feb-April my preference )and then staying out until kill time. Element of surprise is in your favor and the bucks can't pattern you if you're not in there mucking it up.

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X2

[Peeps22]

This year was the first year i went conpletely mobile and i shot my two biggest bucks. The proof is in the pudding guys... all of this mobile hooplah is legit. Like already stated, just moving 50 yds to a different tree can be the ticket.

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[Peeps22]

Also, just want to add the importance of practicing your setup as far as minimizing movement up and down the tree, how quiet you are setting everything up, to how efficiently you can do it. Practice is key

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[Sf22nd]

This past season was the first season that I was mobile. Every one of my sits was a first time sit and I saw more deer this past year than in the previous 4 years that I have hunted.

[Tufrthnails]

I repeatedly passed three year old bucks of first sits of perm stands in KY during nov rut. I went back in Jan with some advise from Dan and a couple others and had a successful fail after slipping in with my climber about 40yards south of the perm stand where I new there was a bed in bow range. I got sloppy and made to much noise standing up and blew a really nice 8 pt out of the bed along with 3 other does in a nearby bed. I say this because we have a camera and feeder in front of the perm stand and have no pictures of this buck.

Now I am going out tomorrow here in Florida in one of the most baffling swamps I have ever hunted to do some scouting for next year. I plan to get my exercise this way. I HATE exercising at the house, but let me get in the woods and I will walk and stalk for miles squirrel hunting. So now I plan to scout some areas some others hove helped me key in on through aerial scouting and hope I can find some sign and a bed or two would put me on cloud nine. This forum has been an eye opener for me. Before I through a stand up in areas that looked "deery" and had a few intersecting trails or food and some sign.