Do deer "pattern" the hunter?

[katman]

They sure do, have had the same experience as ishiwannabe on 4 different occaisions, two hunters in one out dead big buck not long after. In fact I use this routinely from middle season on. Your sent can linger on trails, trees ,leaves etc, for several days after your gone and older wise deer will pick this up. Deer here also routinely look for you in the trees.
The old truism first set in a stand is the best holds true.

[Orion]

At any one time, I have about a dozen stand sites, including tree stands.  Which one I hunt on a particular day depends on the wind, but I try not to hunt the same stand more than once every three days.  After I sit the same stand about three times, I usually move it, even if only 50 or 100 yards.

[ChuckC]

I have had this happen several times, but one time, a few years back was up close and really showed what an adult deer can do.  

I was in a treestand in an area that has grown up recently with a type of small tree that has no growth from the ground to maybe 4 feet high, then it is very brushy.  A pain to shoot thru or around, but it gives tremendous cover while the leaves are on.   This was during a time when you needed to shoot a doe first, before you can get a buck.

As you guessed, I did not even SEE does for much of that year.   A very nice and, till that time, never before seen by me mature buck walked into the stand of trees.  He was up wind of me, never crossed my entrance path and actually walked by me at about 20 feet distance.  I was maybe 12 feet up a tree and with a ton of cover.  

This buck would walk maybe two or three steps, then stop and look around,  UP around.  He was very obviously looking at the content of the trees in the area.  I got to watch him up close and personal for probably ten minutes as he walked thru my small stand of trees in the marsh, then move on over to the next stand.  He was watching the entire time.  

And of course, there are the does.  There are a couple that like to cut thru my stand and find me.  They come in together (I could see them coming, in the marsh) and then they separate, one sneaking in very slowly and watching, the other cutting down wind of the stand.  They ALWAYS find me.  it is a game of sorts for both of us.  I will, one day, either put a mannikin in my tree with me down wind somewhere, or a second hunter down wind.

  Yep, they are dumb, defenseless  critters.
ChuckC

[NCRecurve]

Quite a few years back I was sitting in the edge of a grove of white oak trees bowhunting.  Deer came in right at dark so I sat to let them pass, more deer came in.  The full moon had come up and I could see them walking by glimpses in moonlight coming through the trees.  A buck with a rack nice enough I could see it in the moonlight came from the pasture into the trees.  He hit my trail, followed it with his nose to the ground to the base of my tree and looked straight up at me in the stand.  Eventually he turned and walked off and started feeding.  I finally got down and ended up spooking deer anyway.  Evidently the buck's nose wasn't too impressed with my rubber boots.  From that I came to believe that even when I don't spook deer on the stand I still make them aware of my presence.  I've always noticed the first couple of times on any stand are the most productive for large deer.  I use to almost always hang my stand for each hunt and rarely hunted the same tree.  I'm not sure if I've just gotten old or lazy but I leave some stands hung now, it is more convenient.

Doug