Which way should the wind blow when hunting deer?

Keep the wind blowing from the deer to you — into your face or quartering across it — so your scent drifts away from bedding, food, and travel routes. A whitetail's nose is its primary defense, and getting winded is the most common reason hunters never see mature bucks.

What are deer thermals?

Thermals are vertical air currents driven by temperature. In the morning, warming air pulls scent uphill; in the evening, cooling air sinks and pulls scent downhill. In hilly terrain they can override the prevailing wind, so hunt below deer in the morning and above them in the evening.

What weather produces the best deer movement?

The best daytime movement usually comes on rising barometric pressure behind a cold front, with a sharp temperature drop and light to moderate wind. The first hard cold snap of fall and the calm, clear day after a front are prime.

What is a funnel or pinch point in deer hunting?

A funnel or pinch point is where terrain or cover squeezes deer movement into a narrow lane — an inside field corner, a strip of timber between open areas, a saddle in a ridge, or a creek crossing. These concentrate travel and are high-odds stand locations.

E-scouting is studying satellite imagery, topo maps, and aerial data to locate likely bedding, food, travel corridors, and stand sites before walking the property — so your time in the field confirms a plan instead of bumping deer while you figure it out.

What is the best hunting map app for whitetail deer?

The best app goes beyond property lines to combine high-resolution imagery, topo and contours, parcel and public-land layers, wind and scent tools, bedding and pressure intelligence, and forecast-driven planning that ranks your stands. Contors is built specifically for whitetail stand intelligence.

What is the best stand for a north wind?

Hunt a stand where a north wind carries your scent away from the bedding and travel you expect deer to use — generally a stand on the south or downwind side of bedding. Contors ranks every stand for the exact wind and time you pick, so you can see which setup is clean before you climb in.

How does hunting pressure affect mature bucks?

Pressure makes mature bucks shrink their daytime range, shift into thicker cover, and move more at night. Roads, ATV trails, careless entries, and over-hunted stands all add up — so the highest-odds ground is the low-pressure interior refuge, hunted from its downwind edge.

Is there an AI app that tells you where to hunt?

Yes — Contors includes Scout, an outdoor-intelligence assistant that reads your map (stands, bedding, wind, weather, and the rut) and recommends where to sit and why. It ranks your stands for the current conditions and explains the reasoning instead of just showing lines on a map.

How do you find deer travel corridors?

Draw a line from bedding to the nearest good food, then follow the easiest covered route the terrain offers — along benches, through saddles, inside field corners, and across creek crossings. Where that line is squeezed by terrain or cover is the corridor, and the downwind edge of it is your stand.

Do moon phases affect deer movement?

Moon position drives feeding windows more than the phase itself: major periods occur when the moon is overhead or underfoot, with minor periods at moonrise and moonset. These solunar windows matter most when they line up with dawn, dusk, and a good weather trigger.

How should you enter and exit a deer stand?

Plan a route that keeps your scent and noise off bedding and food the entire way in and out — approach from downwind, use terrain and cover to stay hidden, and avoid walking through the areas you expect deer to use. A clean entry is as important as the stand itself.

How far should a stand be from a bedding area?

Close enough to catch deer on their feet in daylight, far enough not to bump them — often 75 to 150 yards along the downwind travel edge, never inside the bedding. Set up where you can hunt the access cleanly and let your scent drift away from the beds.

What food sources attract deer in the fall?

Early fall favors soft mast, green food plots, and standing beans; as it cools, deer key on acorns (white oak first), then high-energy foods like corn, brassicas, and standing crops through late season — especially on cold fronts when they feed heavily before and after the weather.

Contors — Whitetail Hunting Maps & Scout AI

Stop Guessing

Every Hunch, Replaced With an Answer

Wind, weather, terrain, pressure, the rut — the variables that make or break a sit, finally working for you instead of against you. This is how you stop hunting on hope.

See Every Inch of Your Ground

Flip between Esri and Google satellite, USDA NAIP aerial, Esri Outdoor topo, LiDAR hillshade, and contour lines in a tap. Find the benches, points, and pinch points deer actually travel — before you ever set foot on the property and bump the buck you’re after.

Know Where the Bucks Actually Bed

The Buck Refuge Model reads your roads, trails, stands, buildings, and cover, then paints a live heat map: red where pressure pushes bucks out, green where they feel safe enough to bed and move in daylight. Stop guessing where he lives — see it.

Contors Exclusive

Never Get Winded Again

A scent cone off every stand shows exactly where your odor drifts on any wind, and thermal arrows show how it really moves — downhill at dawn, uphill at dusk — on your actual terrain. Pick the tree the wind won’t betray.

Hunt the Days That Actually Produce

Live conditions plus a 16-day forecast, with a Deer Movement Index that scores every hour — cold fronts, pressure swings, dawn windows. Know which sits are worth burning a vacation day on, and which to sleep in for.

Your Whole Property, Dialed In

Map your boundary, food plots, ag, hardwoods, pines, cutover, water, and sanctuaries; pin every stand, blind, camera, scrape, rub, and bed. The more your map knows, the sharper every call Scout makes — and it’s all saved to your account.

Your Game Plan, in Your Pocket

Built for the field — fast, touch-friendly, works on any phone. Add it to your home screen and your whole plan rides along to the stand, synced to your account so nothing’s ever lost.

Your Outdoor Assistant

Meet Scout — Your Edge in the Deer Woods

The industry's first hunting AI

Scout is the assistant the entire app is built around. It reads your map — every stand, bed, and food source, your wind, the live forecast, the rut, even the terrain — tells you exactly where to sit and why, and then runs the app for you. Ask in plain English; it answers like a sharp hunting partner who never sleeps and does the tapping for you.

It reads your whole property
Stands, bedding, food, your wind and the live weather, the rut phase — even the terrain. Scout samples elevation to spot the benches, ridges, and draws that deer actually travel.

It tells you where to sit
Ask “where should I hunt tonight?” and Scout ranks your stands for the current wind and conditions, names the cleanest one, scores it out of 100, and explains the reasoning.

It runs the whole app for you
Drop any marker, draw your property boundary, toggle any map layer, set the wind, plan a hunt, rank your stands, read the terrain, switch or share a property — Scout makes the change and leaves a one-tap undo. It only hands back what needs your finger, like tracing out a shape, or anything it shouldn’t do on its own, like deleting.

Ask Scout — it’s free →

Scout Reading your map

I’ve read your map — SW wind, peak rut. Right now Creek Ridge is your cleanest sit.

Where should I hunt this evening?

Go with Creek Ridge for tonight’s SW wind.

Creek Ridge92/100

Wind pushes your scent off the bedding · downwind of the clover plot · quiet creek-bottom walk-in.

Best Stand Now Rut Forecast Today’s Plan

Getting Started

From the Couch to the Right Tree

01

Create your free account

Sign up in seconds — no credit card, no commitments. Your maps and markers sync to your account so they follow you across devices.

02

Map it — or ask Scout to

Draw your boundary, mark stands and cameras, trace your cover. Or just tell Scout — “draw my property boundary,” “drop a stand here” — and it sets each one up for you.

03

Ask Scout to read the bucks

Say “turn on the refuge model” and Contors paints a live heat map over your property — red for high human pressure areas bucks avoid, green for the secure bedding and staging zones they favor. It updates live as you add data.

04

Let Scout call the sit

Ask “where should I hunt Saturday evening?” and Contors pulls the forecast wind and temp for that exact hour. Check the Deer Movement Index, confirm your scent cone clears your approach, and walk in with confidence.

The Science

The Buck Refuge Model

Most hunters know pressure kills mature buck activity. Contors quantifies it — and shows you where those bucks go instead.

Pressure sources
Every road, building, ATV trail, walking route, and parking spot creates a pressure gradient using a Gaussian decay model. Roads from OSM auto-scan. Your custom routes and pins add more.

Refuge factors
Thick cover, sanctuaries, pines, and cutover get a cover boost. Food staging bands shift with rut phase. Water proximity adds a bonus. Security is the inverse of pressure — squared, so deer strongly prefer low-intrusion ground.

Live and adaptive
Add a stand, draw a sanctuary, trace a route — the model recalculates immediately. Season shifts (pre-rut, rut, post-rut) change the food staging radius automatically. Your intel, your property, your model.

Buck Refuge Model heat map over a property: red where road and trail pressure pushes bucks out, green secure cover where they bed and move in daylight

Pressure / Avoid

Roads & buildings

ATV trails & routes

Walking pressure

Refuge / Move Through

Thick cover & sanctuary

Food staging corridors

Low-pressure bedding

Try It Free →

Your Field Kit

Everything for the Hunt, in One Tab

Plan the sit, log what you see, and track every buck on your ground. Field Kit and the Bucks hub keep your whole season together — all wired to live wind, weather, and the rut.

Hunt Plan: pick a date and time and Contors ranks your best stands for that hour's forecast — **Plan a hunt**Pick a day and hour — your stands rank to that forecast wind.

Live weather panel with a Deer Movement Index and an hour-by-hour 24-hour outlook — **Deer Movement Index**Live wind & pressure, scored hour by hour for movement.

Hunt Journal that logs sightings by voice and auto-stamps the conditions — **Smart journal**Say what you saw — Scout stamps wind, temp, moon & rut.

Field Kit hub with hunt journal, property hub, hunt plan and weather cards — **Field Kit hub**Journal, property setup, hunt plan & weather in one place.

Track every buckLog each sighting — notes, date, and where you saw him.

Hunting Intelligence

Learn to Hunt Smarter

Guides and insights for serious whitetail hunters — from mapping your property to reading the rut.

Wind Science

How to Use Wind Direction When Hunting Whitetail Deer

A whitetail's nose is its #1 defense. Play the wind right and a mature buck never knows you exist.

Wind directionScent controlMature bucks

Terrain

How to Read Topo Maps: Funnels, Saddles, Pinch Points and Benches

Deer move through the path of least resistance. Topo lines reveal exactly where that is.

Topo mapsTerrainStand placement

Hunting Pressure

Hunting Pressure: Why Mature Bucks Avoid Certain Areas and Where They Hide

Every truck door, every trail, every careless entry teaches a buck where danger lives.

Hunting pressureBuck behaviorSanctuary

Weather

How Weather Drives Deer Movement: Barometric Pressure, Cold Fronts and Wind

Bucks get on their feet when the weather tells them to. Learn the triggers.

Deer movementCold frontsBarometric pressure

Bedding

Where Do Mature Bucks Bed? How to Find Buck Bedding Areas

Find the bed and you've found the buck. Here's how to locate bedding from a map.

Buck beddingE-scoutingSecurity cover

Thermals

Thermals Explained: How Morning and Evening Air Currents Carry Your Scent

In hill country, thermals beat the prevailing wind at dawn and dusk. Ignore them and you'll get busted.

ThermalsScent controlHill country

The Rut

When Is the Whitetail Rut? A Timing Guide by Phase and Region

The rut is the best two weeks of the year — if you know when it actually peaks where you hunt.

Whitetail rutRut timingSeeking and chasing

E-Scouting

How to E-Scout a New Hunting Property with Satellite Maps

Find the best stands from your couch before you ever set foot on the property.

E-scoutingSatellite mapsProperty mapping

Travel Corridors

Food Sources and Travel Corridors: Connecting Bedding to Food

Bucks live between the bed and the buffet. The connection is where you kill them.

Travel corridorsFood sourcesStand placement

Gear & Apps

What Makes the Best Hunting Map App for Whitetail Deer?

Not all hunting apps are equal. Here's what actually matters for killing mature bucks.

Hunting appMappingWhitetail strategy

Advanced Features

Tools No Other App Offers

NWS Weather Radar

Live NEXRAD radar overlay in the classic green-yellow-red precipitation palette. Current conditions only — no animated clutter — refreshing automatically every 5 minutes and whenever you reopen the app.

Deer Movement Index

Each hour in the 24-hour forecast is scored for deer activity — dawn windows, pressure drops, temperature swings, and wind speed combine into a single movement rating. Know your best windows before you leave the house.

Your Data, Your Account

Everything you map — stands, zones, routes, journal entries, and cover shapes — saves to your personal account and syncs across devices. Push an update to the app and your data stays completely untouched.

Best Stand, Right Now

Every stand is scored and ranked for your wind and hunt time — scent geometry to bedding, the stand's best winds, thermal timing and status — and the top pick is flagged ★ Best now. Pick a date and hour to score it on that hour's forecast wind.

Walk-In Navigation

Tap any stand and hit Navigate here: live distance, compass bearing, and an arrow that points the way as you slip in before light. One tap heads back to the nearest parking — your truck — in the dark.

Solunar + Smart Journal

Major and minor feeding periods for every day, rated against your sit. And a journal that auto-captures the wind, temp, moon and rut phase with each entry — so your season's patterns ("most deer on a NW wind") surface on their own.

Hit List & Trophy Room

Build a profile for every target buck, link trail-cam pics and sightings to where you saw him, and watch his pattern come together. Tag him and he moves to the Trophy Room with the full story of the hunt.

Rut Phase Tracker

Contors tracks the rut for your county — pre-rut, seeking and chasing, peak, and post-rut — with a live countdown to peak breeding and what the deer are doing right now, so you hunt the calendar as sharply as you hunt the wind.

Plans & Pricing

Start Free. Upgrade When You’re Ready.

Map your ground and meet Scout for free. Unlock Google satellite, the Buck Refuge Model, habitat and terrain analysis, and buck aging when you want the full edge. 7-day free trial on Pro & Unlimited — cancel anytime.

Launch pricing — limited time. Lock in an annual rate now and it stays yours for as long as your subscription stays active, even after prices go up.

Free

$0

Free forever

Get Started Free

1 personal property (private — can be invited to others’ maps)
Scout AI — limited (5 messages/mo)
Topo, terrain & base maps
LiDAR hillshade, contours & parcel lines
Public land, crops, cover & water layers
Wind, scent & live weather tools

Compare Every Plan

Every feature, side by side. Free gets you a real, working map — Pro and Unlimited add the intelligence layer.

Swipe the table sideways to see all three plans →

Comparison of Contors Free, Pro and Unlimited plans
Feature	Free$0	Pro$4.99/mo	Unlimited$9.99/mo
Your Ground
Personal propertiesMaps you own and manage	1	3	Unlimited
Join a shared mapHunt your buddy’s or your club’s ground	✓	✓	✓
Boundaries, cover & zonesFood plots, ag, hardwoods, pines, cutover, sanctuaries	✓	✓	✓
Markers & measuringStands, beds, sign, cams, parking · distance & acreage	✓	✓	✓
Map Layers
Esri satellite & Esri Outdoor topoPlus USDA NAIP aerial and contour lines	✓	✓	✓
Google Satellite imageryThe sharpest look at your cover	—	✓	✓
LiDAR & hillshadeUSGS 3DEP bare-earth relief under the canopy	✓	✓	✓
Contour linesUSGS topographic contours	✓	✓	✓
Parcel linesNationwide boundaries (Regrid) · no owner names	✓	✓	✓
Public hunting landPAD-US · national forest, BLM, WMA, refuges	✓	✓	✓
Crops & food sourcesUSDA CropScape · corn, soybeans, CRP	✓	✓	✓
Land cover, soils & waterNLCD vegetation, NRCS soils, USGS/NWI water & wetlands	✓	✓	✓
NWS weather radar overlay	✓	✓	✓
Wind, Weather & Timing
Wind & scent cone toolsSee where your odor drifts off every stand	✓	✓	✓
Live weather & 16-day forecast	✓	✓	✓
Deer Movement IndexEvery hour scored for movement	✓	✓	✓
Solunar & rut phase tracker	✓	✓	✓
Hunt Plan & stand rankingPick a day and hour, rank stands to that forecast	✓	✓	✓
Intelligence
Scout AI assistantReads your map, calls the sit, runs the app	5 msgs/mo	Scout Pro	Unlimited
Buck Refuge ModelLive pressure & refuge heat map	—	✓	✓
Habitat Analysis	—	✓	✓
Terrain AnalysisBenches, saddles, draws read off your elevation	—	✓	✓
Scout buck summariesHis core area, daylight odds and the winds he shows on	—	✓	✓
Buck Score & agingAge and score a buck from up to 3 trail-cam photos	—	3 per month	Unlimited
Your Season
Hunt JournalAuto-stamps wind, temp, moon & rut phase	✓	✓	✓
Hit List & Trophy Room	✓	✓	✓
Walk-in navigationDistance, bearing, and the way back to the truck	✓	✓	✓
Account
Cloud sync across devices	✓	✓	✓
Add to home screenWorks on any phone, no app store needed	✓	✓	✓
Free trial	—	7 days	7 days

“Unlimited” means no monthly cap on Scout messages or Buck Score analyses under normal personal use. Sustained automated or abusive volume may be rate-limited so the service stays fast for everyone.

Contors covers U.S. properties only, and accounts require a U.S. resident aged 18 or over. Prices in USD and exclude any applicable tax. Pro and Unlimited start with a 7-day free trial. If you don’t cancel before the trial ends, the plan automatically converts to a paid subscription at the price shown above and renews on the same interval until you cancel. You can cancel anytime in your account settings and keep access through the end of the period you’ve paid for. Annual plans are offered at a limited-time launch rate; that rate is honoured for as long as the subscription stays continuously active. See the Terms of Use for full billing terms.

Take the GuessworkOut of the Hunt.