After reading these replies, something hit me. I started bowhunting in 1967 when I was 11. Six pointers were the biggest bucks that I saw. In 1983 I saw a buck so big that I ran home and told my dad "it was so big you could fit a basketball between it's antlers!!" I was 27 and the biggest buck I'd seen in the wild was a 2 1/2 8 pointer! That all changed in 1985 when I had my first encounter with a mature 10 pointer,a 144" bruiser. So it took me 18 years to see my first mature buck!!

In some of the areas I hunt, I may see from 0 to 3 mature bucks in a season. In those areas I average one in bow range per season unless I don't see any.

For those that are interested, don't give up. It takes time and practice. You'll make mistakes but if you don't, you're not trying hard enough. The best thing you can do is learn your areas like the back of your hand and learn as much about deer behavior as you can, it's never ending. Big bucks have different personalities. One thing they all like is privacy. Find their haunts, look for rubs and big tracks. Try to figure out what they're doing and why. You'll start seeing more big deer.