I totally understand Dave's stand, and I would love tokill a trophy buck instead of a four pointer or a doe.
I guess Ijust look at things differently. My dad started taking usdeer hunting every year at a young age, andhe taught us all heknew about it, which, not to be disrespectful to him, wasn't very much at all.In all the years he took us, he NEVERbagged a deer. Not even a doe.Still,every year, he would get so excited about the hunt. The "hunt", to him, was about family and friends being together in the outdoors. Drinking coffee in the wee hours of the morning, speculating on what might happen. Sitting around the campfire in the evenings talking about how the day had gone, what might happen tomorrow, and anything else we wanted to talk about.
To this day, the "hunt", to me, is about friends and family, comradeship, getting away from civilization and experiencing the great outdoors during the chase of the ever-elusive (at least for us) deer. It's about packing junk food and gear, inventorying, buying ammo, arrows and broadheads. It's about the anticipation of the hunt, preparation for the hunt and the excitement of being in the hunt.
I guess to me, there's a distinct separation between the "hunt" and the "kill". A trophy buck would be a great kill, and it would be a nice end to a hunt. I don't think my dad ever had a bad "hunt". He just never got a kill. I finally managed to kill a nice 8 point buck (my first ever) the last year my dad deer hunted before he died. You could see in his eyes that it made it one of his best hunts ever.