I only hunt the mtns in the south personally and totally agree with one thing that he said - the upper one third is where it is at in the mornings. I have been doing this for a long time, and can also say with a high degree of certainty that I see a whole lot more bucks in the mornings than I do in the evenings in my part of the southeast (there can be exceptions, but it is rare for that trend to be broken).
The gentlemen talking with them is pretty spot on about the efficiency of a buck, especially a mature one, to be able to utilize the trails for picking up does as he moves. In the AM especially, he will most always be by himself unless he is actually with a hot doe, and then it could just be the doe with him, or it could also be several smaller bucks trying to keep up with what he is doing with said doe. The deer density is lower where I am at, so he is even more so by himself more times than not. My point, the gentlemen is correct, it is far easier to beat one nose than three to five of them.
But The key to finding consistent success as he navigates those doe trails on his preferred trail, and even more so in mtn terrain - you have to learn all that you can about thermals and how the wind works through terrain features. He is walking that trail so efficiently for a reason, and that is not only to smell her, but to smell you before you see him if you are in his area. This is critical and he knows that and will often be intentionally "being so efficient" with those trails because he knows where that wind will betray us and give us away before he gets seen and possibly killed.
I hunt mtns, so I do not find myself around fields and edges as much as a result, but there is something to the staging subject. Deer will stage in the mtns and big woods as well, but that is a rather long subject we cannot cover here. But When I used to hunt more edge country like what they are referring to in this video, the deer definitely would always hang back at least 50-100 yards from the openings until almost beyond legal shooting light. You can hunt the staging areas, but it becomes much more tricky to get in and out without blowing him out fairly quick. There are some exceptions to this rule, but you will as a rule spook more deer the tighter you go on the way in and the way out. Think of it as a one or maybe two sit event and wait for the perfect conditions and try to get him on the first or maybe second sit. But that is true anywhere you go, the first sit is always your best chance to kill a 5.5 year old buck. The odds go down really quick from there. So, if you have patience and the time to stay in the woods, I personally in years past leaned more towards hunting a bit off from those tight staging spots and trusting that eventually a hot doe would make him mess up and come to the more visible area that I could access with less chance of spooking deer every single time I went to the tighter staging spot discussed in this video. But it takes a lot more time and patience and many just do not have the time and have to go for it with the few days they have to hunt.
