In looking back over this sub-forum, I note that I have inconvenienced a number of electrons while discussing the idea of "stalking" or "still hunting". I have no argument with those folks who get their food over bait, or from tree stands, or even in high-fenced lots with rejects from the petting zoo.
I wonder, though, if my preference for going into the woods and fetching them out is genuinely strange. Some of my very best memories are of creeping through the forest - or even just sitting on a comfortable stump and trying not to interfere for a few hours - and I would like to hear from any folks who have shared the experience, as well as those who have found it a waste of time.
I had three years of very bad results on my own.
My dad wasn't a deer hunter, and I didn't know any deer hunters to hunt with. OK well that's not exactly accurate..., I knew some older men who loved to let me come with them deer hunting as I was young enough to track down the deer they poorly shot, and had strength and stamina to drag the thing out. I was also good to do heavy labor on the property to "help out" in the summer leading up to each deer season. OH they shared some venison with me, but I was never allowed to go alone, nor was I given the choice locations to await the deer. So after four years of that I finally realized that these guys had sons and grandsons that were never there..., seems they had tired of being "the help" too..., So I didn't know any deer hunters willing to teach me.
It's also possible that the group where I'd been the help had nothing really to teach....
When I moved home after four years in The Service, and after three years of seeing deer at a distance, or spooking them up, but never getting a shot, I stumbled across a book,
The Still Hunter by Theodore S. Van Dyke.
I read it, twice. Then started applying it in the woods in the summer, and then into that autumn.
Wind Direction and/or incorrect movement had been my downfall. The heard me enter the woods, and they smelled me.
I found after reading that using the wind direction, and moving without a rhythmic pace as humans normally do, I could get close. Then I added to that by reducing my "detergent scent" through using plain lye soap on my field clothes..., allowed me to get very close to deer. Sometimes as close as 25 yards. When I spooked deer, I did as the book suggested and figured out where the deer had been, and how it had seen me. Made a world of difference.
So now I Still Hunt, or sometimes still hunt to a spot and then hold there for a while, and then move again, or maybe just stay put. So far it's worked rather well.
LD