I read a great article in a magazine a while back about “misting” for coyotes. Instantly, I thought about a great deer stand site that I have, where the wind is always in my favor. This stand is in the woods between a soybean field and a cornfield with 40-yard shooting lanes in all directions. It is directly adjacent to a hellishly thick cutover which the deer use for bedding. They travel the edge of this bedding area, ducking in when they reach their preferred bedding spot in the mornings. Factor in that the wind is always blowing from the bedding area towards my stand and this is a “text book” stand site. The problem with this “always favorable” wind is that it makes using scents to lure a big aggressive buck into my stand a pointless task. If I could get the wind to blow into the bedding area from my perch 20 feet up, I might be able to get some scent into the bedding area and bring a big buck right underneath my stand. I needed the wind to blow out of my favor so I could get some nice hot doe scent in there and coax out a big buck.

It was two days after Thanksgiving. After sitting through a busted rut season in my old go-to spot due to a trespassing poacher on the adjacent property, I decided I’d get back in the woods and try to get a decent buck with my new muzzleloader. After the rut, bucks are still in the mood and checking for hot does. If I could catch the wind just right, I might finally be able to mist a buck into my stand. Just a decent deer to get my new muzzleloader primed up was all I was after.

It was cold that morning, but it was warming up quickly and I was late. On the way to my stand, a quick check of the wind direction indicated I might have a chance at getting some scent where I wanted. I got up the tree as quietly as possible. I checked the wind again, and it was drifting to about the 8-o’clock position from where I was facing. I waited a while longer, hoping for a more favorable “10 o’clock” direction, but it appeared to be heading back towards “7”. I thought “now or never.” I appeared that the wind would keep working its way around until it was blowing back to me. It was probably going to be my only opportunity, so I took it.

I had been in the stand for about 30 minutes waiting for it to come around a little more. It just wasn’t happening, so I let ‘er rip. About a half squirt of Code Blue into the wind, then I put it down. It doesn’t take much. Too much scent overpowers a deer’s sensitive nose like pepper spray in the face of a human; you have to keep it moderate. About 10 minutes later, one more half spray onto the wind, and there it was — the sound of a buck getting off his bed. Around he came, attempting to circle in the direction the scent was blowing from, trying to get a look at what might be the last hot doe of the year. I listened to him carefully choosing his steps until he appeared in a shooting lane 40 yards away headed straight for me. The buck skirted the edge of the thick bedding area, which took him to within 20 yards of my stand. I waited, cheek on the stock and hammer cocked. Then, moving the crosshairs just up to the narrow shooting lane he was about to cross, I waited for the exact moment when I would introduce him to his end. Two seconds later, thick white smoke filled the woods around my stand. The idea of misting for whitetails had budded and blossomed to fruition.

While not a trophy deer, he was exactly what I was after that November morning. I was thrilled that everything I had planned for that morning had gone exactly as I had been envisioning it. How often does that happen in the deer woods and who wouldn’t be happy about that?

Learn from good sources and good experience. It’s the best way to develop new, unheard-of techniques that just might pay off big in the right situations.