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Armed with heat seeking motion detecting infrared sensors? Besides, when did the fact that there have always been bad...fill in the blank....make it OK for more of the same?
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Sorry, I'm not getting the connection here. Are you saying use of technology makes a bad hunter? We have different definitions of bad hunters, I guess. If hunter A uses heat-seeking motion-detecting infrared sensors and they kill one deer cleanly and safely and hunter B doesn't use any "bad" technology and they gut-shoot a deer that gets away and dies six hours later three miles away ... is hunter A the bad hunter? Are they both?
I'd say that the fixation on technology as the defining point of whether you're a "bad" hunter or not is misdirected.
If you need $10,000 worth of high tech to get a deer, you're probably not very
talented, but if you kill your deer cleanly and according to the laws of your state, and use the meat, I won't complain a bit.
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He uses cameras to scout deer in his absence, 4,600 per year. To me that is extreme, but so that I have some comparison, how many do you take a year? Any guess as to what is average for hunters who use cameras?
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Maybe a couple rolls. If I had money to burn, I think it would be awesome to take a few thousand pictures a year. More pictures would mean I'd be more likely to get some really good ones. Keep in mind that a camera might take ten pictures of the same deer within a few minutes. Out of those, I might get one or two that are neat enough to show off. If he's got several cameras out there, he might get a few hundred of the same deer in the same day.
I guess my big issue with you is the way you try to make "fair chase" out to be an objective regulation that you define personally. Ain't so. And you don't have "tradition" to back you up, either. "Traditionally" hunters drove herds of bison of cliffs. "Traditionally", as fisherman was so kind to point out, the wealthy would hunt random animals from trains. "Traditionally", deer would be run down by dogs. The development of the concept of fair chase is a new one. A good one, but a new one - and not nearly the hard-and-fast concept that you proclaim it to be.
I don't think Mr. Drury violated any state laws in doing what he did. Indeed, to my knowledge he made clean kills on the number of tags he had lawfully purchased. How he tracked them doesn't matter to me. If he can crouch by his kill and feel good about it - feel honest about it - then that's good enough for me. If for you to feel good about your kill you have to walk blindfolded into unfamiliar woods, that's fine too. If my mentor has to use a bow and pass anything but the biggest bucks, that's great.
Drury didn't manipulate the actions of the deer. They weren't fenced or forced to stay in the area. He observed them and harvested a couple. That he used cameras to do some of the observation is utterly immaterial. It is absolutely equivalent to someone asking another person who is familiar with the land where the deer are most likely to be. He is not a bad hunter because he does things differently than you.