Re: How high up do you hunt?
Location height should never be static and should always depend on the hunting situation.
In Kansas and other Midwestern states with little to nearly no hunting pressure, deer don't look for hunters in trees and I hunt probably 5 feet on average lower than what I would if the exact same scenario presented itself in Michigan where mature deer scan trees for hunters. The type of tree also has a huge impact in height. I was only 14 feet high in the tree where I took my Ks. buck last month. It was a cedar and was relatively short as most cedars are. The trunk also became very small beyond the 14 foot (feet height) height and offered less background cover.
No matter the state or area, conifers have lots of cover as they hold their needles all year and you can get away with much lower heights as long as you don't ring all the branches around the entire tree in the section of tree your hunting. Ringing the tree of branches will in itself make the deer look at the strange change as there will be no branches for at least 6 feet. In conifers you can hang lower, but typically will not be able to shoot the full 360 degrees as you background branches that offer cover, will be in the way.
Oaks are another tree that offer foliage in the form of leaves as background cover for a much longer time into the fall than most others so you can get away with a bit lower set-up.
If I'm preparing a tree and it has a large crotch of branches at let's say 18 to 20 feet, that's where I would set-up as opposed to going to 25 or higher if the rest of the tree above the crotch is straight trunked.
Seasonal timing for each location also has a lot to do with set-up height. Setting up near an apple tree for instance that drops all its apples by mid October will not require as high a set-up as next to an apple (fruit) tree or oak where the fruit and mast drop well into November. In a set-up for rut hunting my preference in a straight trunked tree is 25 to 35 feet.
Set-ups should always be dictated by location, tree available (from a foliage and background cover perspective), and time of season the location will be hunted.
While I hunt 25 feet or higher most of the time since most of my hunting time is spent during the rut phases, I would love to hunt at 14 feet all the time as the lower height give the hunter a much bigger advantage on angle of trajectory for the shot. The last buck I wounded was at about 10 yards and I was at 30 feet so the shot was nearly straight down and I single lunged him and never recovered him. Had I been at 15 feet, the shot would have double lunged him and he would have went less than 100 yards.
Shot trajectory should also have a huge influence on set-ups.
When hunting a very specific destination point such as at a small primary scrape area of at a fruit tree where you know the target deer is going to be within a specific 10 foot circle, you can set-up a few feet lower and hide behind the tree trunk until the shot presents itself and then just slightly lean to the side and take him. Hiding until it's time to shoot is the beauty of the saddle type systems.