This took place on Dec. 28th.

4" of fresh snow on the ground. My buddy calls. "It's a good night to get out". So we go.
I get set up on a good trail. A lot of fresh tracks. The wind is right. It's a yellow birch tree, lots of cover. About quarter after 4, here comes a doe and fawn down the trail. It looks like she's going to swing wide, but she comes right underneath me, 8 yard shot. I draw. There is no bow creaking, no noise, but she hears my clothes rustle and jumps just enough and at the right angle that I don't have a shot. She looks around, sees nothing, relaxes, and moves on, the fawn catching up. That's the story of my season, one thing after another going wrong.
There is still, however, plenty of light. And, a few minutes later, I see 3 more deer coming down the same trail. As the first one gets closer, I see a rack. The rack is outside the ears. It's a nice 8 pt. buck. I don't look at the rack any more. He continues to come in the footsteps of the previous doe. As he gets to be in shooting position, I draw VERY slowly, no rustling. I get on him, (picking a spot) and release. Immediately I see that I didn't get the penetration that I expected. I figured I went through the shoulder blade. He runs in an arc, stops just in my vision, and takes off again. I can hear the arrow hit every tree that he passes.
I get down out of the tree and go get my buddy. He asks questions about the shot. He's pretty optimistic that we'll find the deer. I'm not. We find the running track and follow. Pretty soon we get good blood spray, consistantly good blood spray. With that arrowhead sticking through the shoulder blade, as he's running, he's slicing and dicing his lungs. After about 150 yd. of a much better blood trail than I expected, there he is. My buddy is ahead of me and finds him first. "That's not your deer!". "What do you mean, that's not my deer?". "It's got no rack!"
I look. The bastard shed his antlers on his death run. The sockets still had blood dripping.
While I gut him out, my buddy backtracks to see if he can find the rack. He comes back with one antler. We dragged him out and got to register him as an antlered buck because we could show the one antler fit the socket.
The next day we went back and found the other one. I bleeched out the scull and glued the rack back on as best I could. He's got heavy antlers with a 15" spread. It really is a nice buck.