I started hunting about 10 years ago, but haven't made it every year. I've only shot two dear and my last one was by far my worst case of buck fever, to the point that it's almost embarrasing. But, after reading this thread it appears that I'm not alone, so here it goes.

My parents, my wife and I were out hunting public land mulies on what was the last day that I would be able to be out hunting. We got to the area about 1:00 pm. We'd hunted the area a few times before and had seen some deer. This year, since I was driving, I decided to drive in a little farther back into a draw. After parking, while everyone was getting ready to start walking, a buck and two does jump up about 20 yards in front of us and start jogging up the hill. (Deer jog, don't they?) We watched them for a few minutes until they disappeared in the brush and rocks. My dad took off one directions and the other three of us started going the other direction up the hill.

Somewhere after about 20 feet, my mom fell behind, and I didn't really notice. About halfway up the hill, my wife sees something moving across the valley. We sit down and watch for awhile, and from what we can tell it looks like the same three we saw before. They clearly aren't spooked, so we start talking about the best way to get to them. About this time I hear this incredibly odd scream sound and the deer can't get up the hill fast enough. I stand up and start looking for what made that sound, and there it is again. It's this high pitched scream/yell type of sound followed by a poor attempt at a whistle. It's then that I realize what odd animal this is... about a hundred feet downhill I can see my mom's hat trying to crawl over a rock. She finally gets up to us, and, disgusted, I try to remind her that we're HUNTING and deer can hear also. She counters with she got lost and we didn't even notice. I tried to explain that she wasn't lost and point to the bottom of the hill where you can still see where we parked.

As that conversation came to an end, we spotted my dad working his way up the hill behind the deer. We take off to the top of the valley and around to meet him. At the top, he says he saw another small buck by itself that went up the hill, but lost it after that. He asks whatwe want to do, as it's getting late and we're almost out of time. He wants to godown and around, I want to go to the left since I think that's where they went. My wife doesn't care, and my mom wants to go home because this is the biggest waste of time ever and she could havegone to the store or something. Him and my mom decide to walk around to the right and down, and I think the deer went left and down the hill towards the bottom.

So off we go. At the top of one ridge, my wife wants to stop and look around a little, see if she can see something. I leave the binoculars with her and walk over the next ridge. I get about 20 feet down and there's four deer standing there. I instantly start shaking trying to shoulder my rifle while the deer stand there laughing their butts off. I get the scope up and there's two does and two bucks. Score!

I pick outa buck and fire. Two does and a buck walk off chuckling, while the bigger of the two bucks is laughing so hard he can't move. I shoot at him again. And again. I shot about a 1 inch 100 yard group at the range a few days before, but trying to hit a deer at 25 yards was practically impossible. This buck stands there and lets me shoot at him once more, and then realizes that my magazine is empty, so he shakes his head andstarts to walk away. About 35 yards away he decides to stop and look back, get in one more good laugh before he calls ita day. Well, after three more shots, he dropped hard. I decided my scope must have been off, because I was aiming behind the shoulder but I shot him in the neck. Don't know how that happened.

Well I got to him, he was a decent 5 point. And finally, to top off a great day hunting, I got to drive home in a Bronco II with 4 people and a deer.