I am not sure just how closely related to the thread this is but, a few points.
Hunting over bait. Much hunting, if not most hunting is done over bait. We just didn't put it there. Some people hunt over cornfields, some people hunt over water, some people hunt over apples, whatever. A lot of successful hunting centers around finding where the animals feed, where the animals drink, where the animals bed. What about using doe in heat, is that bait ? What about using a doe herself as bait for a buck ? Dispite all this I don't think I would want to hunt over a feeder. I very well might do it if given the opportunity, but I wouldn't feel like I earned a trophy like I would if I had still hunted it.
Paying $2500 or whatever to hunt.
I grew up in Ohio. Deer hunting consisted of going down to the hardware store and buying a tag. I went home and walked right out of the house into the woods. I now live in Nevada. Here we have a lottery for big game tags. Last year I applied for Mule Deer, Antelope, Bull Elk, and Desert Bighorn Sheep. I was drawn for nothing. In other words, I couldn't hunt big game in Nevada last year. I also applied for a cow elk tag in Arizona (Arizona also has a tag lottery) and was not drawn. So, I didn't hunt big game at all. Of course you can go somewhere that you can buy a tag over the counter to hunt big game. But where do you go ? When you get there where do you hunt (where is it legal ? who owns the property? You can't scout so the whole trip may be a waste of time..................) If you get something, what do you do with it (taxidermy, butchering, cold transport etc. a lot of prep work if you don't know someone there). I have hunted out of state several times, but we knew people who hunted there and they clued us in on a lot of the details. Anyway, I would have gladly paid $2500 to have somewhere to hunt and someone to take care of the logistics. The funny part about it is that if I paid to hunt somewhere and they put me in a stand along a major trail leading to a feeder, I might not even know that the feeder was there.
Stand Hunting: I guess there is no disagreement on stand hunting. There are some places where this is THE way to hunt whitetail deer. I never had any luck trying to stalk deer in Ohio. Really thick woods, leaves on the ground etc. made this a tactic that few found effective. Although if it recently rained, it might be a more viable option. Here in the wide open west I see no point to stand hunting with a rifle. I enjoy hunts very similar to what Powderman described. Out here my big gripes are the road hunters and their closely related cousins who "hunt" from the back of an ATV. I consider this shooting rather than hunting.
I have seen some pretty tacky operations in my book where elk were raised and bred like livestock then hunted within fences for considerably more than $2500. I have no interest in that and can't imagine how anyone could consider that sport.