The big boys are finally starting to show themselves! Last night one of my uncles was coming home from hunting and had a really big buck cross the road in front of him and head up into a little neck of woods where I have a treestand. Although he didn't get too good of a look at the buck, he said that it was at least an 8-pt. and his rack looked tall and really heavy. I waited until around 8:30 and grabbed the spotlight to check out a field where all of the local does seem to like to hang out, hoping that the buck would be out there checking the women out. We scanned the field quick to see what was out and there were a ton of glowing eyes out in the corner of the field where my stand is. In the other corner, probably a couple hundred yards from the stand, there were a couple of does and a really nice, long-tined, big-bodied 8-pt. bedded down. I don't know if this was the buck that my uncle saw or not, but it was a heck of a nice deer. He didn’t seem to be too overly interested in the does that were next to him. By the time that I stopped watching the buck, all of the deer in the other corner were gone and I never got to see what they were. I hunted my stand this morning for the first time with high hopes and only saw 1 small doe. On the way out I decided to check for scrapes along a pond dike that always has scrapes around it. I wasn't disappointed with what I found...there was an enourmous scrape about 10-ft. long that was all tore up with big fresh tracks all through it. I'm sure that it was done some time overnight because it wasn’t there Sunday afternoon. There were three licking branches that were as big around as my thumb that were snapped off and laying in the scrape. The branches were broken off pretty high up too, so it had to be done by a pretty nice buck. It wasn't far from where the big 8-pt. was last night, so I'm guessing he's the one that probably did it. Ya never know though. A friend of my dad's had a huge buck with points sticking out everywhere cross the road in front of him a just a little ways further down the road this past weekend! I also just found out that one of my aunts was driving home one night about 3 weeks ago and had a huge buck that she described as “at least a 10-pt.” run out in front of her car in the same spot. After hearing this news I sure can’t wait for the first week of November to get here! Good luck to everyone out there who still have tags to fill.