Wow, that must have been some heart pounding action!!A fewthings immediately come to mind. If the animal approaching from behind (and I say animal because at this point you arent sure what it was but, we assume its a deer of course) was what indeed spooked the 8 pt buck,theappraoching 8pt buckhad to either visually see the animal approaching from behind you thuscausing the buck to run, or smell it or have been previously alerted by something there.You say there is no chance it smelled you or the animal approaching from behind so I would say itpossibly could have been a bigger buck that had whooped up on the 8 pt before, could have been spooked by a person there before, maybe a predator? Are ther yotes, bear or wolves around there? My guess is no on the predator, but what else would cause a deer to bolt, more specifically what would cause a 2.5 year old buck to bolt. My guess is it wasnt shot, but could have been shot at before as well which makes bucks very spooky in daylight.