If you are hunting over any food source, you are hunting over "bait" (either natural or deliberately put there by man) Many huge bucks have been killed over "bait". To "bait" something in, is simply to lure them in with something (food, calls, lure, ect.)."Baiting" is just as ethical as any other legal hunting means. And, if done right, just as hard as not "baiting". You still have to scout and do everything you do without "bait". Almost all of us hunters do without realizing it or calling it "baiting".IMO.
While this may be true, you have to take into account that one is natural and one isn't. One changes a deer's natural pattern and one doesn't. Deer go to their usual feeding areas because it's their natural pattern. They feed in farmer's fields because that's what they've always done. You spend countless hours scouting a certain buck who comes out every night right before dark only to find that someone has put out a pile of corn somewhere back in the woods which he decides to go to before he heads to the corn field like he usually does. I have no problem with osmeone who hunts a NATURAL food source, but when someone disrupts the pre-established patterns of the deer, that's when I have a problem.