Deer are really good at not only detecting where you are, but also where you have been. A deer can come into an area in the middle of the night and detect human scent long after a hunter is gone.
I know a fellow who has killed several hundred deer with a bow, and he rarely hunts the same tree twice. He NEVER hangs stands and leaves them to hunt a spot repeatedly. He does do a LOT of scouting looking for fresh sign and hot food sources though. He says to be very careful and try not to touch anything.
Some spots you can hunt over and over and nearly always see deer, but some areas have deer that are so educated after having been heavily pressured, it's hard to get away with much.
Wearing clean rubber boots and clean cotton gloves entering and leaving a stand can cut down greatly the amount of scent you leave and not educate the deer as quickly. Don't wear your rubber boots in the gas station parkinglot unless you are hunting near a gas station. :idea:
If I were going to hunt a stand repeatedly, I believe I would give it 3 to 5 days in between hunts minimum. Even then, it might take the deer longer to figure you out, but they will eventually anyhow.
If you're still seeing deer at dark in the cornfield, they have simply changed bedding and staging areas, but they are still in the area. I would follow the trails off that cornfield a couple hundred yards and see if I could guess where they are bedding. Usually either a super thick area, or an elevated area where they can see better. Try not to spend too much time close to, or in what you think is the bedding area.
Once you figure that out, hang a stand off the edge of the cornfield far enough back to see deer before dark. Once you see deer or kill deer from this spot, look for the deer to relocate. The more pressured the deer are the quicker they will react to your presence. If they are unpressured, you might get away with a lot more. Some unpressured deer act almost like cattle, and pressured deer can easily go nocturnal. They are really nervous high strung animals. The ones that we don't kill prolly die of heart attacks. Good luck.
