It was a calm, clear, and beautiful November morning during the prime rut in Wisconsin. I was perched about twenty feet up one of the many deer stands located on our property in Waushara County. I had been sitting in the stand for about two hours now and hadn’t seen a deer, which was pretty normal. I sat there thinking to myself, “How come I am not seeing any deer? It’s a perfect morning and the best time to hunt. I have trail cam pictures of big bucks all year long. What is going on?” My problem was I didn’t know the deer movement like I should. In September of 2013, I set out to fix this problem. I knew I would be taking this class once school started, so I decided I would create a whitetail research project. My main goal was to know the best stand and day to hunt on my property. Once the season started I began the project. I had a weather data section in a binder, and also a deer movement analysis. Every time I went hunting I recorded the date, stand, wind direction, wind speed, time, temperature, barometric pressure, moon phase, and atmospheric conditions in the weather data section. In the deer movement section, I recorded how many bucks, does, and fawns I saw, the behavior they demonstrated, the direction they came from, the direction they went to, and also the distance they were away from me at the closest. At the end of the archery season in November, I brought all of the data into the classroom. This data was put into spreadsheets on Microsoft excel, and then turned into different variations of charts. What I learned from this project is the best stand, time, and conditions to hunt in, according to my charts and the data from this year. I also can put
