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For the evening stand, so much depends on those food sources and what kind of shape the fields are in. Assuming the crops have been picked, a farmer with an old piece of crap combine may have left a lot of corn and beans on the ground. Or they may have state of the art equipment that picked it clean and it's already chisel plowed by now.

Regardless, I would put my money on the alfalfa as the preferred food source. Especially, if it's a newer planting.

Hunting Iowa once and they were wearing out Shaggy Bark hickories so what do I know.

Ping ponging AM stands now

I'm thinking by Nov 15 most of the crazy chasing rut stuff is over (if the property follows the same patterns as mine), so I'm trying to get between food and bed and hope a big boy is cruising for does...

AM: 4, 7, or 10 PM: 11, 12, or 8.

That's what I've got it narrowed down to before I picked.

Like many of my hunts it looks like I would need to be have "a bit of luck" on my side

I also factored in the "funnel" factor for a mature buck to be cruising late morning/early afternoon... What I can't tell from this is where the rub and scrape lines are- that last bit of info would seal the deal.

Nice property, but that NW is tough for a lot of those stands!

Jack, if you listen close to the audio Barry mentions something about a rubline in one certain area - if my memory is correct. Actually what I recall hearing he almost tells you which stand would be prime for an AM sit.

My wife and I didn't agree on that particular stand set up. I felt like going farther in, away from an open field was best - I believe Barry mentions several times that the mature bucks attempt to hide themselves from prying eyes - which has been my experience as well, so it made sense. My wife felt like staying closer to the edge as not to disturb the area would be best. So we submitted separate entries.

As mentioned by others, I am eager to learn from Barry's explanation, but as has also been mentioned, the information received so far has been fairly vague and being able to actually scout would seal those choices. But, I think the point was to help enhance our abilities to scout using maps, google earth, etc. before we even set foot on a piece of property.

By the way Jack, I fully agreed with your thoughts.

And actually, in the past, her differing opinion has paid off, for her in particular. Something almost identical happened in Kansas in the past. We had an area to hunt and I preferred one area, and she preferred another area. Granted, the two areas were very close, and I felt that her chosen area would not be nearly as productive as the area I had chosen. However, her choice turned out to be a very productive stand site, whereas the one I chose, we have all but abandoned due to lower deer activity levels. And these two areas were within a couple hundred yards apart in open Kansas country, but just that small distance definitely made a difference.

Nowadays when she speaks, I pay close attention to what she has to say, because sometimes she picks up on things that I overlook.

Also, thanks for putting this challenge together. Pretty interesting to study the area and come up with ideas on how to hunt it. Without boots on the ground it is challenging, but fun to try and figure things out.

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One morning, with a NW wind, I was hunting a stand across the field from the pinch point stand. It was late Oct. and the leaves were dropping pretty good. I was watching in amazement as the leaves falling from the trees over by the pinch point stand were blowing out into the field from the NE even though the wind was out of the NW.

I couldn't take it any more as the leaves continued to blow out into the field in what looked to be nearly the opposite direction of the morning's wind. I finally figured out the bluff along the inside of that creek bend was re-directing the wind current and it held true at that stand every time the wind was out of the NW. About the 3rd time I hunted that stand, on Thanksgiving weekend, I had a decent buck come through and right behind him, a bruiser. I let the first buck walk and when the big boy was only 20 yards away, he looked right up at me, got nervous, and made a 90 turn right out into the field. A tree limb blocked my shot and I had to let him just walk away.

Since that time, I had one other spot on a farm in east central Iowa with nearly the same situation....when the wind was out of the NW, it blew from the NE in this stand due to a river and ridge bending the current.

This time, in this stand, when I grunted in a big NT, I got the shot and made it count! Some things you just don't see until you spend some time hunting an area.

This was an incredibly fun challenge. It really gave me some great things to think about for setting up my own stands.

When is your best time to hunt #4. Something about that spot intrigued me.

Pretty pleased with my picks. Figured I could have been off by a mile.

I have a question/suggestion though...similar to the post-contest write up of the unnamed SW wind "killer stand" and then ol' #4...I would like to ask if Barry could break down the other stand locations in the original contest and provide a little bit of a write up on each one in terms how you got to and from it, what factors on the ground made that stand a good choice, etc, and also, any specific anecdotes on nice bucks that were seen or taken from that location.

I understand that this would be time consuming, but there is nothing to hunt right now! :)

Thanks again

I am totally awesome and this game was rigged because I didn’t win …LOL!!!

I am pretty sure I chose #11 for afternoon, strictly based on afternoon corn, easy access without getting busted, and fairly "wind proof" with a nice narrow finger of trees extending out into the corn for the deer to follow with a little more of a safety net.

Again - all I did was look at the map, I had no time to listen to all the audio. Good stuff Barry.