Maybe I was lucky, but here is what happened to me just this past weekend.
Got to my tree at 6:05am. Was already getting eat'n up by the skeeters so I sprayed myself with OFF from ground level. In the tree at 6:10 and had 3 doe under, and I mean under, my stand at 6:20. Draw your own conclusions. They sniffed a tree I had touched the previous day and sniffed my ladder.