Everyone knows that you should be quiet and still while on your deer stand, but that also goes for going to it.

Always approach your stand site carefully and cautiously. By crashing through the brush, you will alert any deer in the immediate area to your presence. Not only will these deer not come in the direction of the noise, their nervous attitude may alert any other deer that might be moving your way.

If you spook a deer in the immediate vicinity of your stand, that deer will remember it as a bad experience and associate it with that area. Bucks are very easy to spook out of an area once they realize hunting pressure is on.

Hunting a single site for several days in a row is a bad idea. No matter how careful you are, the deer will get wise to your constant presence. If you have a big buck figured out, hunt him sparingly unless you want him to figure you out.

The proper use of deer-scent products can greatly help your hunting, but poor use leads to poor results. The first thing to do is to get rid of your own scent. Use unscented soaps and the various human scent-depressing products and cover scents on yourself.
Your clothes should not carry strange odors. Wash your hunting clothes regularly in unscented soap. New garments have a "new" smell and should be washed before going hunting. Keep yourself and your hunting clothes away from smoky areas (either tobacco or campfires). Keeping your hunting clothes in airtight plastic bags is a good idea. Some hunters also put native vegetation or a cover scent product in the bag with the clothes.
When using the lure scents - either food scents or sex scents - don't place them on you or too near your stand so that the deer's attention is drawn to you. Place them out around your hunting area, particularly in areas where you hope a buck will pause for a shot.

Motion adds much to your decoy spread. Always an asset, movement is a near necessity on still days when wary ducks flare from still decoy spreads.
For years we have relied on various "jerk string" tactics to liven up our spreads. "Jumpers" consist of a regular decoy with the string running through a pulley on a heavy anchor and back to the blind. Pulling the string pulls the decoy under water and releasing the string allows it to pop up. Another idea uses the heavy anchor and a bungee cord. One or more decoys may be tied to a string running back to the blind. Pulling the string makes the decoys "swim" toward the blind. Release the string and the bungee cord pulls them back.
These days we have flying kite decoys that soar in the wind. There also are a number of battery-operated decoys that vibrate, wobble, swim about and flap their wings. These add a lot of movement and greatly enhance the decoy spread.

Bucks love cover. The bigger they are the more cover they like and the more careful they are about how they use it. After a bit of hunting pressure, bucks cling to their cover and seldom venture out into the open during daylight, regardless of the temptations.

At this time of year, the temptations are both does and food. Fields and even the open stands of mature acorn-producing oaks are too exposed for a mature buck's liking until after dark.

While waiting for nightfall, the bucks tend to hang back in the woods. If you find a spot of good cover near a field or open oak stand with rubs and perhaps some scrapes, (and particularly if several trails converge there) you may have found a buck's "staging area."

Watching the fields until sunset usually brings lots of sightings of does and perhaps a small buck. If you want Mr. Big, move off the field and back into the woods to find his happy hour hangout.

The oft-used term "prevailing wind" refers not to the way the wind always blows in a given area but the directions from which it blows under a variety of weather conditions. If you set up all your stands based on the wind direction when you established them, you are going to waste a lot of hunting days as the weather changes during the season.

In my home area, a dry high-pressure system usually comes from the north and west and produces westerly, northwesterly or northerly winds, depending on the angle of approach of the front. Low-pressure systems are usually damp and come from the south-southwest but their counter-clockwise rotation "sucks" winds from the east.

We don't get many true "nor'easters" where the weather actually originates in that direction, but the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern states know them well.

Wind patterns vary across the country. Wise hunters should watch the local weather to learn the most common weather and wind patterns in their hunting area and set their stands accordingly.