Let me preface this a little first. My season this year has pretty much sucked. I haven't been seeing many deer and I have had people messing up my hunts etc. etc. I am hunting the same spots that I did last year. Only last year I was seeing several deer and seeing a few bucks even a good one here and there. Not this year. I don't know what happend but the deer aren't using my early spots and then wind hasn't cooperated so that I could make the changes that I need to. Well earlier this week the wind switched and came from the WNW and that's what I needed to hunt a little funnel that I suspected they might be using. I slipped in there Tuesday afternoon and killed a doe and couldn't hunt Wednesday but yesterday there was a nice little cold front pushing through and it had been raining almost all day until I got off work. When I got off work at 4 the rain was slowing and the radar showed that it was all but gone. I had left my climber up so I decided to slip back in and hunt it. The wind started kicking up in the 20's but I had phenomenal success in the wind last year so I went anyway. I got to my stand and hunted til 6:50 and hadn't seen a thing. It was dark enough that anything past 10 yards was going to be an impossible shot and I didn't think anything would have time to make it to me so I pulled up my rope. I got my bow off the EZ hanger and let in down. Then I pulled up my pack and took my EZ hanger down. Put my back pack on. Keep in mind I am doing this slow and quiet. Well I get my feet in the stirrups on my climber and I climb down one step with the climber and a dandy 8 pt takes off about 5 yards from the base of my tree. So I am needless to say frustrated. Well he runs downwind of me about 50 yards and when he got to where he could smell me he must have gotten confused because he turned and ran back in my direction but this time in front of me about 25 yards. Well I am pulling up my bow rope now and decinded to grunt at him. That was mistake number 2 because when I did that he ran back the way he had run originally and stopped about 50 yards from my tree. With the wind blowing and the rain soaked woods he had slipped right up into my back pocket and I didn't even know it. It was still light enough that I could have shot him where he was orignianlly standing but I had decideced, very uncharacteristically to get down a couple of minutes early[:'(][:@] I don't even know which direction he came from[:'(] Oh well that's why they call it hunting. I bet I don't make the mistake of climbing down to early any more though It was fun and maybe if I am lucky I will get to have a rematch with him. I doubt it will be out of that same tree though[&:]