I was curious as to which you all preffered, mornings or afternoons, given the choice. On a trip away from home, my choice is always both, but when hunting from home (often) I have found that I seem to lean towards morning hunts vs afternoon ones. I'd suppose some of it is because I seem to enjoy sitting in the dark and slowly hearing the woods come alive. (I'm in my stand no later than 1 hr prior to sunrise) I really enjoy seeing the day slowly arrive and if relaxing and checking my eyelids, I enjoy the step by step process of getting to shooting light and then to full daylight.
Perhaps another reason I like the mornings a bit more is that should an animal show itself just as it becomes legal to shoot, you know you'll have good conditions to track, should that be necessary. Not always the case, obviously if you shoot at last light. So, I'm curious to see what other hunters feel about hunting a half day and which they'd choose, given the choice. I like both, prefer to hunt both as well, but given just one, I'm a morning kind of guy.
I hope this has not been a recent posting topic, I did check back about two months to try and prevent that. Forgive me if I'm re-hashing old hash here.... 
I have also had some good luck in afternoons, but even just the idea of sitting down at 2:30 and wishing it was 4:30 within 10 mins seems odd to my hunter self... wishing away time in the woods. I also agree that the late afternoon harvest can be a more difficult one as you've described and I'm also prone to say that the penalty for shooting two deer at one time is: having to gut and drag both! LOL! 
