It's still almost a full half hour before legal shooting light, which is a full half hour before sunrise. He makes his decision and lowers the gun, watching the dominant buck walk out of his life. Two days later a hunter in the area kills that same buck a little over a mile away. It scored 176 B&C points and field dressed 240 pounds.
The picture of the successful hunter posing with his deer is widely distributed and our swamp hunter sees the 8x10 enlargement. He knows for sure it's the same deer.
Given the same conditions, what would you do?
Would you shoot? Yes or no?
The emphasis here is on "given the same conditions."
The conditions of the "short story" is that the original hunter made the decision not to shoot, then a completely different hunter did shoot (in the future) and showed proof of it being the same buck that "hunter 1" passed on.
The buck has already been killed in the story. So, in the way it's structured above, the OP is asking if you would take a shot at the buck "given the same conditions"
after hunter 1 had already seen that hunter 2 had taken the deer.
It's just an anachronism that I felt like pointing out, obviously the OP was trying to insert some creative flare into their question and probably fancies himself/herself as a writer. It could have easily been a thread that just started with, "Hey, would you shoot a monster buck a half hour before legal shooting hours?"
But they didn't... the correct way to ask the final question would have been: Given the same conditions, would you have taken the shot that the first hunter passed on?