mart,
Interesting. Though I didn't know anyone who trapped I was interested as a young person. I had to learn to deer hunt myself, but I did it in the same country where you hung out. Northern edge of the Adirondacks. I used to hike the trailless areas of the Adirondacks and skulk around in the north woods myself. Maybe it was a place that made a person want to still-hunt. I took fledgling skills to Vermont while in school there, then better developed skills out to the western mountains. I am not patient enough and too fidgety for a long time on a stand. Tried it in TX, very difficult.
Ditto on USGS quads, but now even more so scouting with GoogleEarth. It used to be so painful to try to get the airphoto maps from USGS so you could study the cover and terrain on fuzzy maps from high elevation passes. Today's resolution can be breathtaking.
Today I use various techniques depending upon terrain and quarry. For pronghorn there can be a lot of crawling and belly slithering due to short to nonexistent cover (knee and elbow pads needed...and tweezers for cactus spines). The same may apply to alpine tundra on mountain mule deer or bighorn sheep. I still love a forest still-hunt for whitetails as much as ever, but it also works for elk. Spot and stalk is also a form of still-hunting, and can be used on elk or deer or sheep or goats (or moose if I ever get a tag). Tracking as the Benoits did was also something I started in the Adirondacks when Larry was becoming a living legend. I was never good at guessing the sex of the whitetail tracks (no mentor), but it is easier on elk, and tracking fresh tracks does take you to where the critters are. All forms of still-hunting are rewarding.
When I took it up, it was defined as "hunting by stealth, silently, without the use of hounds", therefore still as in quiet - no hounds baying or chase dogs barking. Old English usage that was vernacular in the Adirondacks and in the writings of the old guys from back in the heyday of the Adirondack hunting camps. It was learn as you go for me.
