I've killed a few deer wearing a Marc Anthony ghillie jacket. All were while still hunting bedding areas. I'll start on the downwind side and basically just slowwwwly creep from cover to cover. I'll move 10-15 yards then sit/stand still and just watch for several minutes, sometimes hour or more, then repeat. All of the deer I've killed doing this were while I was sitting still and letting them come to me, so not quite spot and stalk.
True spot and stalk hunting whitetails can be pretty difficult in my experience. I hunt a lot of areas with high deer densities, which is a blessing and a curse. Depending on what kinda deer you're looking for, it can be fairly easy to get several stalks a day like you see out west for mulies. But there is usually a lot of sets of eyes, ears, and noses to fool. I often get busted by non-target deer while attempting stalks. And getting into bow range is the easy part. Theres a lot of factors that come into making a good shot from the ground after a stalk that don't typically come into play in an ambush hunting scenario. You may be exhausted from the stalk, you may have cramps from having to freeze in uncomfortable position when a deer is looking at you. You'll likely be shooting from your knees, or in a weird position, or on uneven ground etc. There will likely be some kind of brush, grasses, or twigs in the path of your arrow. The deer will likely be alerted to your prescence, and ready to bolt from the slightest movement or sound. You likely will have a short window, maybe a few seconds to make the shot. And on top of all that, if you're anything like me your adrenaline will be pumping. I've missed and wounded a few, and have had a bunch of close calls but have yet to make a clean spot and stalk kill. Hoping to change that this season.
The "lockdown" phase of the rut is a great time to stalk. November 8th 2018 I saw the biggest buck I'd ever seen at the time cross a road into some public with a doe. I pulled over about 100 yards up the road and snuck in after them. Long story short, I ended up inside 60 yards from them for over 3 hours and watched him breed her several times. I watched them bed down and painstakingly slowy crept my way to 33 yards from the bedded buck, which was as close as cover would allow me to get. I was looking at the doe through my binos and when I lowered them the buck was now standing facing directly away from me. I drew back, with anticipation that he would turn and give me enough of an angle to sneak an arrow in his vitals, but he just stood there like a statue. At this point the doe was staring at me, and my whole body started shaking from a combination of fatigue and adrenaline. I couldn't hold at full draw any longer. So I let down (a little more violently than i would have liked to) and the doe jumped up, blew at me a few times, and they both took off.
Last December I saw a piebald doe enter an overgrown CRP type field 200+ yards away. I was in a tree in my sit drag. I climbed down and sprinted around the outside edge of the field to try and cut her off. When I got to the area she was heading I caught a glimpse of her all-white back legs through the brush. I snuck to within 15 yards of her and decided not to kill her. She was too pretty, and I had enough meat in the freezer, so I just sat and watched her browse for an hour or so. Unfortunately she was killed by coyotes a couple months later.
