Got off work early today(Friday) and decided to go for an afternoon sit. I made a few 200ydloops laying down an estrous scenttrail before climbing into my tree. Finally got settled around 1:30pm. All was quiet which concerned me some. No grunting no bleating no chasing no nothing. Thatwas until 4pm. I was slowly scanning the horizon back and forth. Scanned left, nothing. Scanned right, nothing. Scanned back left, what the heck?Only 15 seconds had passed since I looked at this particular spot but now there was a shooter buck walking 15yds in front of me and closing. He did not take but 2 more steps then stopped and stared directly at me as I was only 12ft up. We both froze at that instant. I didn't want him to see my eyes so I slowly closed them til I could just barely see him. If you must ask, I have this paranoia that if deer see your eyes they will know you are a living creature.

I am now a firm believer in ASAT because this is the 3rd deer(second buck) I've killed this year and they all looked dead at me before dismissing me. Last year when I wasn't wearing ASAT, if deer looked at me, the party was over. Well, this buck actually felt like something was not right though he didn't blow or take off running. Instead he took a detour from his route and cut to his left. Once he got to a point where I felt I was at the edge of his peripheral vision, I slowly drew, and let it fly. The shot was 30yds quartering away and I hit higher than I wanted resulting in a single lung with small parts of some arteries cut. I wasaiming heart but missed it completely.

This happened exactly at 4pm. I then called 2 of my ex-brother-in-laws to come help me track. At 7pm we took up the trail. The blood was good at first and was a definite lung hit but a painstakinghour later we were still finding decent blood in some spots while other spots were just specs. Honestly, I will admit that this was a borderline "keep going or back out" situation. By that time it had already been 4 hours since the hit so I decided that unless we hear him get up and take off, we'd press on another 30min. We were all about ready to give up when baby bro starts walking really fast towards something in the tall grass. I knew then our search was over.

Here he is. Sorry for the dark pix. I will update with daytime pix when I get back in town on Monday. And yep, this one is going to the taxidermist too! Oh, I should mention also that this guy was the biggest bodied deer I'd ever shot. The one last year went 240 live, probably 200 dressed. This one is even bigger than him by a good 20lbs! His head and neck are ridiculously huge though you can't tell by the pic.