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Hunting the “Perfect Wind”
When I am planning for a hunt, the biggest factor I consider is the direction of the wind. Everyone knows that white-tailed deer have an excellent sense of smell but it never ceases to amaze me how a deer 100 yards away can pick up on the slightest bit of human scent even though we are 17’ up in a tree. When I look at the wind forecast, I look for the whole time I will be in the stand. Some days that ends up being long after shooting hours because deer are still around me and I don’t like to spook them when I exit my stand.
For me, the “perfect wind” is coupled with a stand site that has a safe side for my scent to disperse before, during, and after the hunt. If you are hunting a food source, this means you enter on the opposite side that the deer will enter, and the wind is in your favor the whole time. This may be harder when you have a food plot surrounded by cover which is typically better for daylight movement of deer, but there is a definite trade off with such a stand because deer can enter and exit from any direction (and some will end up down wind of you).
When the hunt is over for the night, I like to have somebody drive out to pick me up which bumps the deer off the field and gives me a clean escape. This technique works well in small doses, but even if you use a vehicle to bump deer off a field every night you will see a decline in daylight movement there. Another factor to consider with the wind is how it relates to your entry walk. You may have a wind that works great for the stand but may alert deer of your presence long before you arrive at your stand.
The last factor to consider when it comes to wind is that the only thing that stays the same is that it changes. A north wind will blow mostly out of the north but slight changes cause your scent cone to disperse at a wide angle. I like to use the free app from ScoutLook Hunting which allows you to place your stand on an aerial photo and watch how your scent cone changes throughout the day. The perfect wind will blow rather consistently at about 5-10 mph here in Minnesota, but a perfect wind in Montana might be 15-20. A day with no wind is tough because your scent pools around your stand and you can’t really tell which direction it’s going. Don’t forget about thermals which change with temperature and will typically flow uphill in the morning as temps rise and flow downhill in evening as temps fall. The general rule of thumb is to hunt high in the morning and low in the evening. Use the wind to your advantage to keep from getting busted this fall and it could be the difference in bagging a mature buck.
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