So what people consider to be fair chase is always an interesting to me. I get that much of our ethics is based on the culture we are a part of, but the discrepancies are wildly different.
I wonder though how much of it has to do with availability of resources/terrain and how much is simply history.
Take a county like mine for example it is roughly 380K acres of which 10K are public. Of that public 7000 acres are flooded during the fall for green timber duck hunting. Now we are down to 3000 acres for deer, the farthest you can see on that WMA is one field that you could see 200 yards. Average distance you can see is more like 70 yards. Spot and stalk is simply not an option, you have to learn a different way to hunt. Transitions are much softer, elevation changes of as little as two feet become major. The max elevation change from my favorite farm in any direction for 15 miles is 30 feet, most of it is less than 10 feet of variance. Therefore spot and stalk is almost looked down upon in my area, that's what road hunters do since only a few very wealthy land owners actually have enough continuous land to reliably spot and stalk.
I know guys who who are convinced that western hunting is repulsive. To them its driving around to glassing spots, picking out which animal they want and then simply sneaking up on them into rifle range. It is the laziest form of hunting. I mean you don't have to know the animals that well you just look for them and then go kill them. To them stand archery hunting where you have to predict exactly when and where an animal will be within an 80 yard circle is the real art. Other parts of the country see sitting in the same tree on the edge of a bean field as incredibly lazy, I mean throw out food and the animals show up right? The truth is probably somewhere in between.
From my experience it is much easier to pull animals into a food plot than a bait pile yet lots of people are ok with hunting food plots or cut ag fields but not baiting. I've never put a in plot that didn't fill up with deer. I've put out tons of bait that rotted because I was off by less than 50 yards. Move the pile and suddenly I couldn't keep it filled. As far a saddles, funnels, dried creek beds etc.. some places just don't really have that. Hunting water tanks seems to be acceptable but they funnel animals way more than a 50 pound bag of corn.
I get that on the surface it seems ugly but unless you are very familiar with the area it may be considerably different in reality than it is at first glance.
For what its worth I have three areas that I will hunt hard this year. A pancake flat ag area that will be 100 percent stand hunting over food plots and travel corridors for deer, a mildly hilly oak area that will be mostly stand hunting based on geography for deer and hogs and a heavily forested old growth national forest with fairly "mountainous terrain",at least for this area, for fall bear and deer doing almost 100 percent spot and stalk. Each area is completely different and if I was forced to use the same tactics on each one I would be successful on only one place. I love them all but just because they don't hunt your way doesn't by default make them less of a hunter than you.
