While hunting last night my hunting partner had what he thinks to be a nice buck blow at him. It was after dark and he was waiting for a couple of other deer to clear the area so he could leave himself. As he was waiting, he saw the large bodied deer approaching, it came to within 20 - 25 yards from stopped and blew at him and pawed the ground. The deer then retreated a few yards and stopped, it then resumed its travel but in a different direction. He thought he waited long enough for the deer to clear but as he climbed out of his ladder stand he was blew at again by the same deer he believes. He is hopeful that same deer will come back, but I say no way after all that. What do you guys think?

I' m suspecting that the deer did not know what your friend was and needed some type of confirmation. As long as the deer didn' t identify your friend, I would continue to hunt the deer.

Your friend alarmed the deer and the deer responded hoping that your friend would idenitify himself.

Should be ok...

My understanding if the snorting/pawing/stomping is that they can' t identify what they are looking at and they do that to try to spook what they see. I could be wrong .. if so I' m sure someone will correct me.

I would hunt it agian but not at the same spot. Especially when he was getting out of the stand they blew agian.

Not only will he come back - he has already come back.

probably about 3 hours after you friend left - to check it out what spooked it. Got it a good nose full of people stink....

and NOW will never come back

The buck was obviously spooked and maybe your friend didn' t directly spook the deer, but his scent is probably still lingering a bit. I' d give that area a break for a few days and things should be OK. That doesn' t mean your friend cannot hunt 30 yards away from that spot, but I would stay away from that same exact spot for a few days.

YUP, good strategy. Give it a few days and set up 40 or 50 yards away further downwind.

They will come back, had a doe bust me one morning getting into my stand, snorted a few times and took off, half hour later she came back just to snort at me again. A week later I think I shot her, 30 yards from where that tree was. As mentioned above, good idea to change stand location and maybe take a different route to the tree.

The deer was trying to get your friend to commit and show himself. Just move a bit down from where the ladder is now. Sounds like a good chance to bust one.