November 6 2003, hunting the concession road. The run was quiet and the dog made no runs. The dogger came out to me so we radioed and made our way back to the trucks, all of a sudden the dog started up so we booted back to our stands. We waited to hear 2 quick shots. A miss on the other side of the bush. So once again we headed out to the trucks. The guy who missed the buck called the dogger to come put the dog on this fairly fresh track. So another guy and I went to our stands. This time there was one empty stand so I went to the far one and if I heard the dog I would cover the stand I was at before as well. So I got all settled on a stump, and I thought I heard the distant sound of a dog but wasn’t sure due to the noisy creek that ran by my stand, so I made my way down the trail away from the stream. I was just about to my other stand when I saw some brown in the bush, a deer slowly walking out to the trail. I stood safety off waiting for it to get out of the trees onto the wide-open trail. All of a sudden the deer stopped behind some trees, but I waited gun up for him to cross the trail. I knew he had sensed me because he bolted out of the bush across the trail. I stopped, saw antlers and fired, quickly reloaded my .32 special, but the buck was out of sight up the thick treed slope to my left. I ran to where he had crossed and looked up the trail. There I saw him about 50 yards up the slope thrashing then he settled, I knew I had hit him. From where I fired to where he had crossed was only about 35 yards. I saw a blast of hair on the trail, and a huge blood trail, some spots being drowned in blood. I made my way up to the buck, he was dead. My 1 shot was a perfect one right threw his heart. A beautiful symmetrical 8-pt rack, and a fair size deer. My first deer an 8-pt buck, not bad. Then my dad and another guy came along and we started to gut it, we got a picture, and got my dog away from his feast. With that buck I won a 100$ buck pot and memories to last a lifetime.
