Was able to get out yesterday afternoon, with temps in the 70s. I didn't think I'd see much action. Boy was I wrong. I have permission to hunt a small horse farm north of Leesburg. My ladder stand is in a huge tulip poplar in the middle of the lower pasture. I'm bordered on the right by woods and on the left by a wooded creek that seperates the pasture and a grassy uphill slope surrounded by woods. I got into the chair around 3:30. Around 4, I heard some crunching in the woods to my right. Five minutes later I watched 3 does hop the fence into my field. A minute aftert that, a small fork buck with one antler busted off followed the does and immediately charged them. The action took them all directly behind my tree, so there was no chance of me shooting any of them. I listened for a while and the ruckus died down, then I looked over the creek to my left and noticed the spike halfway up the hill pointed toward me and looking back into my field. Then I noticed him quickly look behind himself, then start purposefully away. I was about to put the scope down when this 8-pointer walked out of the woods and onto the slope. My heart was beating out of my chest, but I managed to calm down enough to take the shot. This is the best deer I've ever shot and I've been hunting a lot this year with no luck, so that all combined to make me feel a lot of urgency about this shot. He walked about 15 feet and expired. Anyway, the heat doesn't seem to slow them down. Oh, and neither do horses. My pasture was full of them during this whole thing, and neither the deer nor the horses paid any attention to the other at any time.
My rifle is a Remington M700SPS in .270WSM w/ a Leupold Rifleman scope. The shot was 100 yards.
Northern VA 8-point
