Great day in Illinois
Today was Illinois shotgun opener and the bucks were on the move. The morning was kind of slow as I only saw 4 does and a small 110 inch 8 point. I shot one of the does and let the rest walk.
This afternoon my luck changed (sort of). I was hunting a stand that is in a staging area and surrounded by bedding areas. The neighbors started shooting at some deer about 2:45 and from 3:00-5:00 I saw over 20 deer come running across their fence to me.Unfortunantly they all ran about 100-120 yards off onto another ridge.
Out of these deer there were 4 bucks.A small 6 point came through early and shortly followed by a real nice 130 class 8 pointer.A few minutes later I saw nothing but horns coming across the cut corn field as a real wide 10 pointer was chasing a doe, and behind him was a small 8 pointer. The big buck disappeared into the brush and reappeared on the same ridge 30 mintues later with 3 more does. He once again ran off, and about 5:00 I saw some does filtering out into the field. I climbed down and began to stalk to the edge.
When I got thereabout 10does had spooked and ran off but the big 10 pointer was straggling behind them. He took one long last look at me at about 50 yards. I pulled up on him, but the problem was my cousin was supposed to be hunting a stand over the other side of the field. I couldn't take the shot I was presented with so I had to watch helplessly as a buck of a lifetime walked off.
I was sick to my stomach when I came back to the shed and my cousin said he had killed out early in the afternoon and was no longer on the ridge. I am going to have a long night trying to shake this big boy out of my head.
I looked at some pictures of some deer and I would compare him to be anywhere from 24-26 inches wide and his G2's and G3's were both right around 10 inches and his main beams sweeped around, he lacked some mass, and I'm not to sure how to guess a score on him as I have nothing to compare him too.