High enough?

[Hoosierhunting]

Me and the fellas have a group text that revolves around hunting, fishing and general BS. Recently the purchase of a new 25' ladder stand brought up the topic of treestand height. The fellas all seem to subscribe to the Cheech and Chong school....can never be high enough. The TV land and interwebs experts all seems to say that at 25-30' your scent magically disappears....which I assume is where the fellas have gotten this new learnin. I tried to reason that extreme heights also mean extreme shot angles, especially at archery ranges. Your sight plane makes those vitals smaller at extreme heights and your chance of a one-lung shot or worse is greatly increased. My personal stance is that there is such a thing as too low...say 10-12' but that over 20' makes for tough shot angles at typical 20-30 yard archery ranges. I also questioned how that extra 5-10' makes your scent magically disappear. Apparently, I am grossly misinformed and all deer are now trained to look up 20' in the air but no higher, and scent wafts far away from your stand site on the jetstream that is only found at those heights. So what says you fellas? If I'm wrong at least there's a cell phone tower on the property I hunt.

 

[Doe Shooter]

If you hang a stand on a pole in the open you'll be picked off at first movement no matter how high. Conversely, a carefully placed stand 12 foot up with good surrounding cover where your not sky lined is the berries. It's all about the set up and hunting only with a favorable wind.

 

[Kwood]

All can be partially true given different scenarios. Higher you gain the ability to be out of primary sight line. It also helps cast scent father away and scatters it a bit more. It doesn’t eliminate it.

Access to and from stand and predominant wind is still important.

Also surroundings. Foreground and background cover is more important.

Shot angle is also crucial. 25’ up shooting a deer 10 yards away is hard to hit both lungs.

I choose height by what tree and surroundings give me. Lower the better but it doesn’t always work that way. I won’t go over 21’. I prefer 17’.


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[j-bird]

I tend to be 15 to 20, but I agree in that it depends. Only time I like to go higher is when I know the stand if for a gun only hunt.

 

[Hoosierhunting]

I suppose I should’ve added all the fundamentals like breaking up silhouette, hunting the wind, access etc. My main question was will you sacrifice shot angle and go higher than 20’ for perceived benefits? And the veracity of those claimed benefits. Does your scent cone really differ with 5-10’ of height difference in a way that is noticeable to a deer/beneficial to a hunter. I’m real skeptical that if it makes any difference that it would be enough to justify the increased shot difficulty. Like you Kwood I find 17-20’ is my sweet spot.


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[Hoosierhunting]

Oh, and if anyone has a good stir-fry recipe let me know.


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[Drycreek]

My opinion is that 25' is nosebleed height. Never hunted that high in my life, and I've killed my share of deer with a bow. I killed several of them out of a 10' tripod because in Central Texas there weren't many trees much taller than that. While theoretically, you'd be better off (scentwise) 25' up, I can't prove or disprove that. I have one tripod that's 17' to the seat, and that's about as high as I'll go.

On my low tripods, I'll always set it next to a tree or two trees growing close together (even better). I have some square tubing that plugs into the pockets where the shooting rail normally would fit, and I wrap camo netting around the tree and to the square tubing. This covers my back and helps to keep me from being skylighted.

 

[Hoosierhunting]

My opinion is that 25' is nosebleed height. Never hunted that high in my life, and I've killed my share of deer with a bow. I killed several of them out of a 10' tripod because in Central Texas there weren't many trees much taller than that. While theoretically, you'd be better off (scentwise) 25' up, I can't prove or disprove that. I have one tripod that's 17' to the seat, and that's about as high as I'll go.

On my low tripods, I'll always set it next to a tree or two trees growing close together (even better). I have some square tubing that plugs into the pockets where the shooting rail normally would fit, and I wrap camo netting around the tree and to the square tubing. This covers my back and helps to keep me from being skylighted.

I'm with you Drycreek and these guys think nothing of 30' stands. Aside from the pucker factor, I can't contemplate making shot angles that much more difficult on yourself....these were dedicated archery stands and I was the odd man out thinking it crazy.

 

[SwampCat]

In my area - leaves come off the trees late Nov. When hunting at 25 or 30 ft, you are greatly restricted by what you can see due to lower leaf canopy from understory trees. For bowhunting, I like a deer at about 25 yards from a stand about 17’ high. I dont like the deer right up next to me.

 

[Jeff H]

The rule I have always gone by is " Low as possible, High as necessary" It differs with each placement.

 

[pinetag]

When I was younger I used a climber exclusively and I would get fairly high (25' or so) but probably never breached the 30' threshold. Now I use primarily hang-ons and 15' ladder stands and I have never noticed a decrease in deer sightings or an increase in deer sensitivity with being lower. In fact some of the best bucks I've seen have been out of hang-ons that were less than 15'. I would say it's much more important to be concealed! Anytime I am up in a wide open tree with no canopy around, the deer just seem to sense something is there even if they don't pick me off outright. I look for low hanging branches, forked trees, or evergreens around the tree you're choosing to put a stand.

And if you think about the fact that many people still hunt off the ground successfully, well there goes the "higher is better" logic.

 

[Tap]

The only time being extra high helps with odor detection is when deer are extremely close to the tree and the wind is moving parallel to the ground.
With an up draft, height doesn't matter and with a strong down draft you'll get busted no matter how high you go.
This is a good reason why milkweed is so valuable. A lot of guys don't understand what the wind is REALLY doing.
I'm all about ethical shot angles and concealment. I like to pick tree that work for 14 - 18 feet.

 

[Hoosierhunting]

The only time being extra high helps with odor detection is when deer are extremely close to the tree and the wind is moving parallel to the ground.
With an up draft, height doesn't matter and with a strong down draft you'll get busted no matter how high you go.
This is a good reason why milkweed is so valuable. A lot of guys don't understand what the wind is REALLY doing.
I'm all about ethical shot angles and concealment. I like to pick tree that work for 14 - 18 feet.

Milkweed....I thought the only way to know what the wind was doing was to buy powder in a bottle

 

[j-bird]

I don't worry about height - I focus on backcover, hopefully some front cover and I want my scent going to where the deer will not be or if they are there I don't care. I prefer to have my scent blow into the neighbors, or an open field, over a pond or lake or over some sort of terrain that I know the deer will avoid (cliff).

I have 1 stand that is only 12 feet off the ground, but I have killed more deer out of that stand than any other. I't tucked back into cover, the deer are virtually forced to be in front of me due to a lack of cover and a steep creek bank behind me (literally drop something and it might go splash). I add some camo burlap to the shooting rail as a makeshift skirt, but other than that if the deer blow behind me, they are on the neighbors or had a very low likely hood of coming my way any how.

if your going to go high - you need to practice high.....and with a 3D target. this will show you what your angles will look like and thus how you need to adjust where you are aiming. Focus on where the vitals will be. If I am higher than I care for I like to leave a tree top or the like to force the deer further away to reduce the shot angle.

I love using milk weed seed to track the wind......

I am pretty active on my property so the deer know what I smell like.....as long as that smell is not where it isn't supposed to be....things seem to be OK. Maybe it holds me back from killing a monster.....but I just prefer to keep things simple and easy.....far more things to worry about than 5 feet of stand height.