One November morning 3 years ago, I was set up in an awesome funnel. I had seen a 140 inch 8 pointer 2 afternoons ago, and then got a shot at him (and missed) the day before. Right at dawn I saw a doe come through and I shot her. As I was sitting there (and not another arrow knocked), here came a total brute 150 inch 10 pointer 10 yards in front of me.

1. Don't shoot a doe right at dawn in November.

By the time I got an arrow knocked the buck was out of range.

I ended up seeing several more bucks that morning, while I stayed on the stand. I could see my doe and was not worried about having another tracking job. I had 3 1.5 yr olds walk through and another 125 10 pointer that I couldn't get a shot at.

After some time I figured I would get down and go get the doe taken care of. I lowered my bow to the ground FIRST and then packed up my stuff. As I looked up I could see the same 8 from the past 2 days coming right at me. I finally got my bow raised, an arrow knocked, and then drawn when he was at the long distance of 5 yards and he busted...no shot. I am still have nightmares of this hunt to this day.

2. NEVER lower your bow until the second you are ready to climb out of your stand.

This rule helped me out last year as I was able to get a shot off at a buck. I had already had my backpack on my back when the guy walked out into the field. This time my bow was ready and well yeah it didn't work out again then.....but one of these days I'm going to put one of these Illinois studsdown.

I have been hunting for 10 years now, and the last 3 or 4 have been when I started getting serious. I have made a lot of mistakes, and learned from them, and then still made them somewhere down the road. Some things I really need to work on are hunting the wind and stand locations. I have become "used" to how the deer move through our farm. I need to just look at it from a whole and figure out how they are really using every piece of the property.