ive never hunted from a treestand..this year i will hunt from one though....ive sat with big trees to my back...or a pile of olg dead trees...my favorite stand....i watched a 8pt buck walk right upto my dad and was about to step on his legs until my dad jumped towards it to stop it..it walked right up to him sniffing the air and my dads trail and everything...we arent into all that scent control stuff either.....we try to play the wind...but if we cant get a good stand with good wind we dont cry about it....we still hunt and it doesnt effect us much...we hunt funnels so other guys are spooking deer coming in and moving on trails and the deer have just about nowehre to run but right by us...so they really dont have time to smell us...it works for us....one stand produced 5 deer in 2 seasons in 3 days in about 9 hours and we seen many deer each day....we never had problems hunting from the ground....you cant see as far from the ground...but being eye to eye with a whitetail is very exciting...this year im going to be in the air just so i can see farther....i know deer are making it around us because we actually are lower then thembecause of the way the land sits.....good luck...its really not hard to hunt from the ground....