One of my all-time favorite stalks ended with a shot through sage brush, off a set of home-made shooting sticks, and into a Doe Pronghorn's brain.
Shooting sticks can be amazingly helpful, but they need to have a portability factor you are willing to work with. Fixed-length, rigid, ~36" sticks seem to fit my style pretty well (with the hinge point at about 30").
The best part of the ones mentioned above was the cost. One of my brothers made them for less than $3. A couple 3/8" dowels, and a 3/16" machine-thread screw made for a set of sticks that could be left behind if they became too much of a bother.
Next year, one of my rifles will have a Harris Bi-pod attached. We'll see how that works out...