Laxdad, I hunt mostly from the ground, and Ive taken many deer still hunting, stalking, or just sitting on the ground and waiting for one to show up.Ive tracked deer as you have for miles through the snow, and Ill admitt most times it doesnt end for me with a kill, sometimes I lose the track completely, sometimes all I find at the end is a warm melted out bed and know Ive screwed up and been busted.

Im not nearly as old as you and havent near your experience.But I guesse I look at treestand hunting and its popularity a little differently.When I started hunting it was at a time when there was an open door policy for much of the land, you could hunt almost anywhere without worrying about tresspassing or running into posted ground.If you did ask a farmer or landowner for permission it was almost a strange thing for them, nobody cared where you hunted and theyd just give you a funny look and tell you to go ahead, most times theyd tell you you didnt need to ask every year.There were a few places then that didnt like hunters and everyone knew which ones they were and just steered clear of them.

Growing up hunting in these conditions was a kids dream, you could just walk out your back door and keep walking till you got what you were after, if you scared the game you could go on and find more, or pick up the track and go after it..Fast forward to today, everythings posted or leased, most guys have small chunks of land they have access to limited time to hunt.It can be difficult to get legally shot game back if it so much as crosses a property line.

When I see everyone hunting out of stands or a younger person warning against something like hunting a deer bedding area its usually because of these reasons.With limited ground to hunt trying to learn the art of still hunting, or stalking or hunting where the deer are bedding you risk the chance of chasing deer off a property that may not hold a lot of deer to begin with.Often these daystheres not the option of just moving on to a more productive area if you burn one out.

Im lucky, we have miles of public ground and 20 years worth of landowners that Ive connected with that will let me hunt.I can still hunt that way and if I do happen to mess up bad enough to run the deer out I can move on untill they come back into that area.Ive killed over 20 deer from the ground with a bow without the use of blinds or anything.Im not bragging, just leading up to my next thought.Even with that many kills I dont consider myself really good at hunting them from the ground, I still bump deer, I still get into positions where everything goes well but I cant shoot, sometimes I just flat out make bad decisions.Had I grown up only having 10,20, or even 100 acres to hunt Id have probably never gotten the limited skills I do posses now much less the chance to get really good at it.