I have been following this forum site for awhile now, but I never felt the need to comment until now. Reading this post was eerily similar to my experience last night. It was a cold morning that was sure to lead to some good movement, but it only lead to a few does walking past me. But the best part of the morning was the turkeys were going crazy all morning.. Something you could only hope to see in the spring.. So after a bad morning as far as deer hunting went, but an amazing morning in the woods I went home to watch my Mountaineers play.. After grabbing a bite to eat and watching till half time I went back out. I sat for 2 1/2 to 3 hours that evening without even seeing a deer, and was constantly getting text messages from other hunters in the same area; most of them consisted of their disgust with the lack of deer this close to the rut and/or they are getting out early tonight. My response was somewhat of an annoyance to the lack of deer, but "what's the worst that's going to happen, a beautiful sunset hurt your eyes?".. Well needless to say I ended up only see 2 does that evening, but the sunset was one of the best I had saw from my stand this season (and the current background on my phone).. And the same guys that left early got that picture with a nice little message showing them what they had missed, along with my cousin in FL who is coming up in a few weeks to hunt.. And his response was the best of all.. So this all brings me back to an old saying my grandfather always told me, not matter if you're fishing, hunting, or just going for a hike.. People need to slow down and "Stop and smell the roses." I always thought I understood what he was trying to tell me, but not until recent year have I realized that you can never fully understand the need to Stop and smell the roses..

By the way this was an amazing post, Rob.. Hopefully it'll get more people out to experience this instead of concentrating on the aspect of only killing, not the hunting experience as a whole.