As I sit here in the rain securing my spot, listening to the coyotes a few hundred yards away, I’m thinking I just don’t care that much anymore! I used to be up a tree asleep by 3-30 but have gotten lazier with age and children. Rarely ever use a stand anymore and definitely don’t get in the woods that early, but recently have had a guy beat me to one of my favorite spots a few times. A place that I’ve rarely seen anybody hunt in the past several years. Been sitting here since 3:30 just to prove a point to a guy that probably won’t even show up today! For the guys that hunt public land, what’s the earliest you get in the woods? And turkey season doesn’t count because I do just about anything for a hot one!

I used to be where I was going fairly early(3:30-4:30).Got tired of hearing bucks doing there thing,and not being able to see them...

I’ve gotten in as early as 3 hours before sunrise, but majority of the time I try to be set up no less than 2 hours before sunrise. I want to be a ghost by the time the deer start moving (also, I can about guarantee I get the spot I want that morning)

Bout daybreak

Deer hunting not so much, but duck hunting we used to get out there at midnight and hang out all night if we though we had a good duck hole.

I grew out of that, thank god.

None of us had kids, families or much common sense back in those days.

My favorite part about public land is finding everyone elses years past honeyholes and the artifiacts that go with it. Once you get a few hundred yards off the road and start finding a beer can here, tin of sardines there, and a few reflecting tacks stuck in trees usually lets you know you've found a good spot. Then daylight comes and you see a buncha deer and then you understand why all that stuff is around. Good luck!

Some areas look like dang airport runways with all the marking tacks.

I knew a guy once that would put them damn. Ear every 10 feet!

I do all of those things on public land to lead you away from my honey hole. You won't find any evidence of the place I'm actually hunting.

Yupp I may walk half a mile down the main road then cut off in the woods and if a truck comes by I step off in the woods until they pass. I'll even stomp out deer tracks if they are crossing near places I like to hunt. I've even covered up the blood from a deer I've killed with dirt to hide any evidence

If you told me I had to be up a tree by 3:00AM to kill a deer, I'd quit hunting forever

I usually watch the stars for a few minutes before it starts to get light.

200-230 once on the island at pickensville and I won't ever do that chit again

I will say I only found the stuff after I saw a giant when I was scouting one day. So I keyed in on the spot due to how it looked on the topo and actually spotting a huge deer walking around at 10am. I set up a morning or two after right above where I saw him and his buddies feed and when I got down that morning is when I found a few tacks in trees right around where I climbed. Saw plenty of bucks in that spot, it's nice

I like to get in and setup about 30 minutes before legal light. Had plenty of deer under me before legal light doing this. I'm not sure how some of you guys don't sleep through the best time of the morning going in there that early, surely you don't set an alarm clock lol

This is probably the one thing that is going to cause me to stop hunting. I don't mind getting up crazy early, and I don't mind the long walk, or sitting in the tree for a long time in the dark, but there's a new breed a folk out there who are simply madder at them than I am. (I'm guessing this is mostly pertaining to public land)

It has become a damned if you do, damned if you don't, proposition. For example, for the past 12 years most of my hunting has been on a local military base, and the way it works is you go on Friday to get your permit for Saturday and Sunday. You go in Friday and they have the areas that are open posted on a large board, so you pick the area you want and get a permit. Oh, the permit issuing office doesn't open until 8:00AM, but guys will be lined up in the parking lot usually by 5:00AM (or I've seen earlier). Most of the areas are roughly 400 acres, and their rule of thumb is to issue 1 hunter per 40 acres, so you might have 10 hunters going to the same area and it's first come / first served. Well you know all 400 acres isn't equal, most of us know the best spots in that area, so you're all trying to beat each other to that spot. So on Saturday morning you start lining up outside the gate, because they won't let you in until 5:00AM, and for most of my years out there the earliest folks would start rolling in around 2:00AM (+,-). Even then we all thought it was crazy, but you had to do it. Well the past couple of years it started getting earlier and earlier, you'd start hearing guys say "that first truck in line got here at midnight", for example. This year there's a new group of guys I've never seen before out there, and some of them are getting out there at 6:00PM on Friday evening, and by midnight you've got 20+ trucks in line. Well this has seemingly created a new problem with an opposing breed of folks who say "F*** that, I'm just gonna roll in there right at 5:00AM and find somewhere to hunt!" Now the problem is you've been out there since 1:00 or 2:00 AM, slept in your truck for 3 hours, walk in and get up your tree, only to have a jackhole walk in on you right about daybreak and booger the spot or cut you off. I've just gotten too old and ornery for this anymore.

All the WMAs around me have gotten similar to that also.

The longer you sit there the more of your scent has infiltrated the cold woods because scent drops with the cold

I have spent the night in shooting houses

About 1:30.........................PM.

one time back when time changed during turkey season we had had a few beers and got confused on spring forward fall back.

ended up getting to listening spot 2 hours before we wanted.

have spent night at duck hole on Alabama river and shined people away every couple of hours.

0400, sat till dark in one of those cheap ladder stands with no pad. I didn't walk right for a couple of days and didn't see a single deer. Haven't done it since either.

Deer hunting, i used to start hiking up the mountain wearing nothing but long johns and boots at 4am to reach my stand by 530 (1 hr before daylight). This was VA public land in the 80s where you had hunting pressure even up high. We were crazy. Killed some deer though.

Boar hunting, Ive slept in a shooting house all night in Germany. Sometimes the pigs would wake you up and sometimes at sunrise you’d switch stands to hunt deer or drive your stiff tired self to work.