After ascertaining which way the autumn winds (mostly) blow, choose several sites for your ambush and prep them well before the season. Since I live in a lightly populated region and hunt largely on private land, I don't fear tree-stand theft in the summer, and so hang as many as I can then. If, however, you don't want to leave a tree stand up all summer for fear of theft or deterioration, simply prepping the setup will put hours of hunting time in your pocket. You can even put in tree stand steps if you plan on using a hanging model. And for sure get the laborious trimming of shooting lanes out of the way.

Besides cleaning out shooting lanes and adding or subtracting backdrop to a stand site, I practice the fine art of diverting deer traffic towards my stand. Like most animals (humans included), deer like to take the path of least resistance -- so make that available. Using a machete and old-fashioned muscle, I make sure the paths past my stand provide interstate-quality, no-hassle travel routes.

Do they work? You bet. At one of my favorite properties, I've chopped permanent trails through the thick brush over the years, and everything -- including whitetails -- uses them. And in four years I've taken three Pope & Young-class bucks from my machete-made trails. One of the best, a 150-incher, ignored a doe that was struggling through the dense brush to slip onto one of my trails; he went down from an easy 18-yard shot.

Another summer chore: the creation of mock scrapes. When I arrive in the fall, many of these scrapes have already been activated by eager bucks; the others I bring back to life with scents such as Hunter's Specialties Dominant Buck Urine.

Trimming shooting lanes not only makes the most noise but also leaves the most scent on the ground, so it makes sense to do it in the summer, thus allowing wind and rain to purge your traces before fall. Having eliminated the need to prepare the site, you can erect a stand in mere minutes when you arrive in the fall.

Further, summer sees a nonstop flurry of rural work: farmers in the fields, ranchers working cattle, construction workers laying pipeline. Most deer, with the exception of wilderness bucks, see a lot of humans at this time, and your temporarily unsettling presence in the woods will soon vanish from consciousness. Even a disrupted wilderness buck has time to forget about a summer intrusion, and will return to his daily pattern well before the hunting season.

A MATTER OF TIME
Overwhelmingly, time lies behind my preference for prepping tree stand sites in the summer. Who has time to do it in the fall? I'm hunting then! And when I'm not, I'm catching up on family activities and work. Even if the threat of theft prompts me not to hang a stand in a particular area, I can still have most of the preparation finished, thus speeding up the start of the autumn hunt. After all, hanging stands is easy if you don't have to scout or trim shooting lanes.