I had not even settled into my stand yesterday afternoon when I heard rustling leaves off to my left side. A mid-size doe was moving through the timber and constantly checking her back. I looked behind her to see this dandy buck lagging behind her, casually keeping an eye on her, but not pushing too close. He came to within about 40 yards, but there was not shot with all the trees between us. After a few minutes he headed off...directly away from me. I quickly finished getting ready...putting my face mask and hat on and then gave a couple of medium lound grunts on my true talker grunt tube. That stopped him, but he was not interested enough to come back. He walked away out of sight until about 5 minutes later when I saw him coming back my way. The doe was heading back too, but there was also a small fork-horn coming in from behind me. It was funny to see that little forkie high tail it out of there when he saw this deer.
Anyway, my buck kept coming in, crossed in front of me, stopped and eyed me for a few minutes...which made me nervous as heck. He then kept walking on...tracking the doe and gave me a 20 yard shot after stopping him with an eerrrrpppp. The shot was about 3 inches more forward than I would have liked for it to be, but I knew he was hit hard.
After settling down for a few minutes I called my wife to tell her the good news. She came down to the farm and helped me track it about 130 yards...following a great blood trail.
I drug this thing out of the woods and took him to our local (on base) check station and weighed him in at 218 pounds live weight and later measured him to be 160 2/8 inches.
I'm having trouble with "cut and paste", but here is a link to where a few of the pictures are hosted.
http://groups.msn.com/10-point
Enjoy,
Craig
My 11/4/07 buck
