I was sitting in my stand yesterday evening watching the squirrels and birds when I heard the unmistakable sound of a deer walking close by. The area that I have my bow stand up in is very thick so it' s hard to spot the deer untill they' re almost on top of you. After a few minutes of burning a hole through the surrounding thick stuff trying to spot this deer something caught my eye. It was a branch moving, then the form of a deer just below it tickling it with his rack. The deer was about 35 yards out and through some thick stuff so a shot at this point was out of the question. As I watched I could see he was sporting some nice headgear (how many points I couldn' t tell) and his body was large. I could see his neck was swelled as he was facing towards me and as he rubbed his horns and deposited his scent on the overhanging branch. As I watched he began making a scrape. His rack was impressive, one of the biggest bucks I' ve seen in a long time. After a few minutes of scrape making the buck began to move off and is going to bypass my stand, but instead of getting impatient I don' t make any rash moves and decide to wait a minute or two longer to see if he comes in without any coaxing from me. He' s out of sight now but I can still hear him in the thick brush just beyond my shooting lane. Just then I hear it, ....the sound I' ve never heard before in the wild, the deer lets out a snort wheeze. Immediately I knew what it was, and it got me a little riled up. At this point I decided to give a couple of light grunts on the old grunt call to see if I could pick a fight. As I blew into the grunt call, nothing happened!!! WHAT THE lsjdfls!!!! The reed had fallen out somewhere between my stand and the truck!! Now what?? Then I hear a loud crack as if two bucks had just locked horns for a split second and then separated. Then nothing. All was silent. No deer. No sound of deer. Nothing. As I set there in my stand until dark, contemplating on what might have been had my grunt call worked, I couldn' t help but wonder if that was the big boy of the area. I' ve always heard that only the most dominant of bucks will let out a snort wheeze and I know by what little I saw of the deer that he is very large. One thing you can bet on is that I' ll be getting a new grunt call and sitting in that stand everyday that I get a chance till that old buck makes a mistake and gives me another chance.