Guy's, Thanks for all the kind words!
Here's the story.
My season started out with quite a bit of activity. I saw a couple of nice bucks from Oct. 30th through Nov. 3rd. By that time I had seen and passed on three different bucks ranging from 126" to 138". As stated earlier this year it was my goal to shoot something in the 145"+ range or a clean 10 pointer. I know this area holds the bucks I'm after.After Nov. 3rd my sightings went way down. My mature buck sightings were down from previous years by 50%. A few days later, during a morning hunt, I had a 10 pointer pass me at 14 yards. He would have been great and been about 134" had he not broken off a g-2. This caused him to be about 126". I decided to pass. I went about 6 days without a mature buck sighting. I was having problems seeing any deer at all!
I ran into a streak of days where the wind wasn't right to hunt the stands where I figured the action would be. One day I decided to take a risk and hunt a stand with a cross wind. I figured the deer movement would be from my right to left during an evening hunt. Well guess what? Them stupid deer didn't do what they were supposed to! [:@]Just before dark I had a doe approaching from my left. Moments later I heard a grunt, then another. At first I thought I was hearing things but then I heard it again and saw the buck. By now the doe was in front of me at 30 yards and the buck was following. It was the same buck I saw breed the doe in front of me over a week before. Once that buck hit my scent stream he locked up. He didn't like it one bit and turned to go back where he came from. He was about 50 yards out. The doe squatted and took a leak then moved off to my left. The buck wanted to get to that doe in the worst way. He came back around, stopped and checked for my scent again. He decided to circle around wide and then get back to the doe. He did so cautiously and finally got back on her trail. He did give me an iffy shot and again I passed. After he got over by the doe I heard him snort wheeze and it appeared that he was coming back toward me! As it turned out it was a different buck! One of the 138"s I had passed on. He too gave me an iffy shot as it was getting dark and he was at 28 yards. After the deer has all passed, I got down in the dark and snuck out of there. As cool as that was, I don't think I'll be that risky anymore. None of them alarmed and bolted out of there, but still...... that was close.
I left the area cool down for 2 days and hunted elsewhere. I didn't see a thing. Finally, Sun afternoon I had a window of time where the wind was right for that stand. It's a great stand, my favorite, where I got last years buck from. The pattern for the last week had deer movement coming just about quitting time. At the end of the night I had a 1 1/2 year old 5 pointer go by. Well, I had about 5 minutes of shooting light left. The last 5 minutes of my deer hunting vacation! I started to slowly pack up, put my grunt call in my pack and removed my face mask and was putting it in my pocket when I looked down....... Holy smokes! There's a buck walking toward me on my entry trail! I took a look and spotted a big sticker or drop tine and well.......... I shot that bad boy!!
I got down found my arrow. It looked good but it getting too dark to follow a blood trail (no flashlight! [:@]). I waited until this morning and found him right away.
Incidentally, I called the GF right from my stand. She had been out of the country on business last week and called me one morning to tell me that she dreamed I had shot a non-typical with a drop tine at 11 yards!
When she answered I said, "Honey guess what?, I shot a buck with a drop tine butit was at 12 yards!" How about that!!?? [:-]
Thanks for all of your comments!
