Here's my story;

Many years ago, it was the first day of the West Virginia archery season. I was hunting with two buddies.

Right after first light I saw a button buck approaching from behind me. I was in a treestand on a hillside. The button buck was on a trail on the downhill side of my tree.

In West Virginiawe shot any deer and did not hunt antlers. Weeach had two tags for either sex.We shot whatever came by first.

The button buck stopped underneath me. I shot practically straight down. I heard that hollow"Thunk"at my arrow's release.

I hung up my bow to give the deer a little time. I sat in my tree thinking of how quickly I had filled my first tag and wondered how my buddieswere doing. We were there for three days and hoped to bring home six deer.

I waited about 15 minutes and climbed down. My arrow was sticking out of the ground. Imagine my surprise whenI examined my arrow and it was completely clean on blood or hair. I followed the deers tracks in the loose damp soil for about35 yards. No blood!

Icouldn't believe I had missed. I knew I heard that familiar "thunk". I couldn't have missed. I went back to retrieve my arrow. I couldn't pull it out of the ground. It was stuck it a tree root beneath the ground. that explained that "thunk" I heard.

I managed to get the arrow out and returned up in my stand. I barely got settled in when a fog started rolling up the hill from the valley below. As it filtered through the trees it was almost like a dream or movie or something.

Suddenly I saw a deer coming up the hill through the fog toward me. It was a small buck. I drew my bow and made the shot. This time I saw the arrow strike home.

Later that morning I found that one of my buddies connected on a doe.

We ended up with 5 deer between the 3 of us in the next few days.