RE: 11th hour PA buck!
Well, he's caped and I cleaned up the jaws to age him. I used three different sets of aging charts and he's either 4 1/2 or 5 1/2. That means he is most likely the deer I've been after since 2005. If it s him, this isn't near his best rack either.
Now the bad news. I had to dump the meat. He was really run down from the rut but he also had a bad infection. There was over a quart of nasty looking puss all along his side through his chest and stomach muscles. the puss didnt smell bad so I'm thinking he had beaten the infection butthe very large accumulation of puss was still there. Funny thing is that there was no visible woundapparent.