Whitewater Day 2 - Sit 17 & 18 - River Crossing & Scrapeville

I borrowed some chest waders from a friend and they came in handy this morning. Although we got a late start and missed a turn on the way to Elba, we were able to cross the river with good light and got set up by 8am (only half hour after legal shooting light). I meandered into a slight bench against the inside of the southern most bluff within the four mile chunk. Saw no deer, froze my toes off (30 degrees when we left the truck - so about 25 at it's coldest moment), and had a few Asians walk under my stand. Got that on film anyway. We met up by the river bank at 10am and decided to go for a hike and hang a stand for Donny. We hiked up to the top of the bluff I was against, which was from 700ft up to 1125ft.

We saw some really good trails and eventually came across a pattern of bucks skirting the ridge top on the north end which led to a mouth of a draw that was littered with scrapes.

We eventually got Donny set up and began our decent and were back to the truck by about 1:30pm. With a S to a SE wind in the evening, we headed over to where Scot and I sat the evening before. I was excited to check the camera we put up to see what kind of activity had been at the scrape.  Dead batteries. It got a few pictures of a doe and fawn. That's it. Of course I didn't have extra ones with me and to make matters worse, my extra batteries were in Scot's truck, which was about 5 miles away. So we left it. I powered it down for the night, which sucks, but I'll get in there tomorrow to switch the batteries. I didn't check the Wildview. I didn't see the point. I'll check them both on the way in to the bottom, which will probably be either tomorrow afternoon or all day Monday.
I climbed up in the tree and sat until dark. No deer. Not much to say, really. We talked to a few locals in the bar for lunch and they said they've seen bucks chasing does in daylight, so it's about to kick off. We just need to find bucks on their feet during daylight. It's so intimidating or overwhelming to try to understand, let alone conquer such rugged terrain in just a few short days. I'm struggling to put the pieces together. That bottom is promising, but I realize two things: A) I have to go back down there to hunt and B) I only have two days left and therefore I can't be too picky with my wind direction. The difficult part is that the predicted wind has been changing DAILY. How do you plan your rigorous hunt, when you're not even sure that once you get to where you're going, that the wind won't be completely against your success?
I am determined to spend more time per day in the stand. That seems fruitless on the tops near the crops. That is unless the does are very near estrous and they have a buck hot on their tail. We're a week away from that.