[Brian Pfleuger]

Yeah, it has a lot to do with your surroundings. Most places that I go are on one of two extremes when it comes to trees.

There's either nothing but straight, branchless, climbable trees everywhere or there's nothing but traditional, low, wide, heavily branched maple tree type things and you have to take whatever climbable tree you can hope to find.

Both areas have advantages and disadvantages.

The first area, you're almost guaranteed to be able to find a good, wide, tall, climbable tree right where you want to be but you're also not going to have any cover or branches anywhere near you so you look like a giant zit on the tree. You have tons of options for different wind and trail directions but you have to be really high to avoid detection.

The second area, if you find a tree, you will probably have background and cover but the odds of finding a tree where you want it and the odds of being able to get more than 10 or 12 feet high are much lower. Even so, with good background probably around, you don't need as much height.

I've also found it to be absolutely true that deer can see your eyes. I always try to keep my bow between my eyes and the deers eyes and I even sometimes close my eyes or squint heavily to avoid detection when the deer are close and interested. It definitely works.