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Even during a stalk, you need occasionally to stop and listen ... sometimes for what seems like a long time. On a stalk, a whitetail may come on you. Is that not a hunted deer because you didn't sneak up on him? Because you didn't pursue him and find him looking the other way?
Some of the same skills are required to stand or sit in one place and wait that are used to hunt on the move. As a matter of experience, it is often more difficult to keep your place and wait and NOT walk around.
If you hunt long enough, you will eventually surprise a whitetail where he stands while you are on the move. Likely his curiosity is more powerful that his urge to flee that particular time. And you will wonder how it happened. Then again, you may never know he watched you go by.
Still hunting, as it is called, was developed long before we had the leisure time to speculate on the ethics of different ways to hunt. Still hunting is used to efficiently preserve the hunter's energy while bringing home the meat food. The hunter that knows where the prey will be is a knowledgeable hunter, a successful hunter. He walks straight to where his "harvest" is, takes his game and brings the food home.
Only modern man made it a sport. Then modern man assumed the responsibility to manage the game and conserve it as a resource. Looking for ways to make it more sporting is fine. Stand hunting is a version of still hunting brought to us by bow hunters. Techniques developed by bow hunters and duck hunters decades ago made hunting easier for us gun hunters: camo clothing, blind hunting, decoys, food plots, deer stands, scent masking. You get closer shots and insure fewer wounded animals. Bow hunters need to let the game get closer. You sure can't run 'em down, can you?
A sport, yes. But to make it more sporting by making it more difficult would be to the detriment of the game. And that's where your responsibility lies as an ethical hunter.
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