anybody care to share funny or odd stories of "the one that got away?" this should be a fun thread. i'll go first...

WARING: THIS IS A LONG POST

well, i had been hunting this buck all season, but hadn't seen him yet (he was VERY nocturnal.) he had a good-sized track so i was pretty sure he was a good buck...on one cold december day he finally showed himself to me. i was sitting in my stand all bundled up for the cold weather, when i caught movement out in front of me. there he was, my buck. i was sure it was him. he wasn't a giant buck, but he was what i would call a "dandy" eight pointer. anyway, he was coming directly towards me offering no angle to draw (let alone shoot.) 40 yds, 30 yds, 20 yds, and coming closer. i still can't draw on this buck because i'm afraid he'll see me move. finally at about 15yds he stops in the wide open and actually turns broadside so he can look behind him at something. when he does this i see my opportunity and draw. as i'm finding my anchor point and starting to settle my pin on the hair i have picked out he turns back and faces directly towards me! ah! my shot opportunity is gone and i am standing there at full draw. he continues towards me. i figure i'll just hold my draw until he walks past me and hopefully offers a quatering away shot...he keeps coming closer until he's about 5 yards from my tree and then he stops...he is underneath a very brushy dogwood tree that is growing from the base of my tree. this worries me, i'm sure he has smelled where i had walked in to my tree just an hour before...seconds begin to turn into minutes and still he stands there. there wasn't a wisp of wind at all. i could actually hear that deer breathing and every breath he took looked like a fog...my string arm starts to burn and my bow arm is starting to quiver...i couldn't hit the broadside of a barn now...i had to let my bow down. the pain was just excrutiating! finally, i let my bow down. i had been holding my bow so long that i hardly had the energy to keep that bow from tearing my arm off! well, you can imagine the "woosh" noise i made as my string arm brushed against my heavy coat. anyone ever held their bow a long time and tried to let it down "slowly?" ha! didn't happen for me! needless to say that buck took two giant leaps directly sideways about 20 yds and stopped and looked back for the "boogie man." he just stood there for a long time. my arms may have been tired but my concentration on that deer hadn't waned...after i would guess about 10 minutes the buck went to feeding on some of the late season acorns...i could not believe it! what luck! god must have known how much time i had put into this season to give me a second opportunity! i was elated...i let him feed until his head went behind a tree and i drew my weapon with my fully recovered arms. i was practically already smiling for my "after the hunt" pictures...but, when i came to full draw, i could tell something wasn't right. standing at full draw, i glanced down at the arrow on my string to only see it wasn't there! WHA?!?! after further investigation i found my arrow, perfectly "balanced" teeter-tottering on my forearm of my bow arm. sure as you please there it was...i could not believe it...i guess when i had let down my draw the first time, all the force had dislodged my nock from my string just enough that when i went to draw the second time it slipped off the string completely and somehow nestled itself on my bowarm. i was so intent on that buck (and so ecstatic) that i almost didn't notice the arrow had come off my string. can you imagine if i had dryfired that bow?! anyway, my new plan of attack was to quickly let down my draw (while the deer's head was still behind that tree) and grab the arrow before it falls. well, you can guess what happened. i let down my draw and saw my arrow fall off of its balanced perch and clang against my stand as it fell to the earth. the buck leaped out to about 60 yds, again looking for the "boogie man." after about 20 minutes, he went back to feeding and fed out of sight...after he was gone and i was replaying the fiasco of what happened in my head, i just burst out laughing. i just couldn't contain myself. i couldn't believe my entire season had come down to this moment and this is what happened. unbelievable.

i never saw the buck again that season...

to this day i still think about that buck and think if he only knew how lucky he was, or how UNLUCKY i was!!

so, that's just one of a number of stories for me. surely, something like this has happened to someone else...please don't tell me i'm the only one!

Wow that was a long one. Great story tho. I feel your Pain/joy/excitement/anguish.
Mine would be my very first draw on a deer (a nice doe). She moved across my shooting lane. I was following her with my eyes, waiting for her to go behind a old maple so I could bring my bow around...well apparently I was "fingering" the release. When that bow released I about S**T. I was looking one way the bow pointed the other. I swear that doe just looked up at me and said "dummy", then she walked away.

I had one 2 seasons ago. It was our first year on our new property. My son had seen a nice 7 point early in the season and shot right over its back. Anyway I was in that same stand early November and guess who comes walking in. Well he stopped about 10 yards out looking right at me offering no shot. I figured I had to get this guy so I could get the first buck on the property. He turned and started to walk broadside to me. Well as soon as he got behind a tree I drew and was ready. He was behind the stand and we really hadn't cleared any shooting lanes but I had some openings. I was already thinking about how I was going to rub it in to my kid that I got what he missed. Well he stopped and I let fly. About 3 feet in front of my bow was an ever so small branch. I thought I was shooting over it and instead I nailed it. This branch was not even as big as the xx78 I was shooting. Well the arrow dang near broke in two. I couldn't believe how much damage that branch caused. The buck jumped about 10 feet sideways and disappeared.[]

Well my most embarrasing moment actually turned into a whole morning of embarrasment. It started out way before daylight setting in my truck with my younger bro' waiting on enough light to see to walk through the woods, when the primal urge of pooping in the woods hit me and there was no waiting until daylight. So I head out in the dark, sub teen weather, to answer natures call. Well in my haste I failed to get my insulated coveralls competely free of the runway and ended up leaving the previous night Taco Bell on the sleave of said coveralls. I had to break the ice off of a mud hole to try to wash off the deposit. Well if that wasn't bad enough, when I returned from the morning hunt my bro' had killed a deer and we drove my brand new Toyota truck up to retreive it. When we drug the deer down to the truck I realized that I had locked the keys in the truck and had no way of contacting anyone to bring me the extra set. So in my frustration I took a rock anf threw it through the driverside window and I had to ride 1 1/2 hours in 25 degree weather with no window. Needless to say my brother still hasn't let me live this down.

funny stuff, guys. keep it coming.

kelincp, i had a buddy who did that twice in the same season! lol. i thought he would have learned from his mistake the first time, but nope. it took a second time to figure it out.

Damn Gutshot......some days you should just stay in bed.

Too bad you never know which days those are huh?[8D]

King you're right some days it just doesn't pay. But I did learn one thing no more pre hunt trips to Taco Bell.

gutshot, too funny!

that reminds me of an outing i had one time. i was sick with the flu. yup, the stomach
flu...but i just couldn't miss a day in the woods. (i'm always afraid that everyday could
will be the day that the big one will come waltzing by.) anyway, i was sitting in my stand,
and, man, it was really cold too. when all of a sudden the urge hits me. i mean it hit me
like a 200 car freight train. i couldn't get down out of that stand fast enough...i
actually started to make an attempt to try to leave my hunting area so i wouldn't stink (pun intended) my stand site up. i made it all of about 20 ft. away and couldn't stand it. as i was sitting/squatting/(whatever the heck i was doing) there guess what comes bee-boppin' by...a decent eight-pointer...that deer got about 50yds from me before he noticed me. he just stopped and stared at me, and for some unknown reason i did the same back at him, i didn't move a muscle. it was kind of like a mexican stand-off. i'm not real sure what i thought i was going to do with my pants down around my ankles. after standing there a long time (did i mention it was really cold that day?) he finally, turned around and headed the way he had come, and in a hurry i might add. since then i haven't went hunting with the stomach flu. [&:]

Good stories! Back in '97 or '98, I was bow hunting a spot I had hunted on several occasions. Anyway, I went there before light with my climber and scampered up what I thought was the same tree. When I got to where the branches were, I figured I was at 20 plus feet, since I had trimmed them below that height previously. However, as dawn broke and I could see, I realized I was in the wrong tree, as I was only about 12 feet high. Wouldn't you know it, within probably twenty minutes of being able to see, here comes a nice buck angling right toward me, and about to pass within 8 or so yards from my tree. He went behind a tree, but when I drew, he saw me anyway. He did an about face and trotted off about 30 yards in the direction he came from before stopping and turning around to see what had spooked him. It was then that I could tell he was among the best bucks I've seen in the woods. If only I had trimmed those branches at gone to 20 feet. It is not likely he would have seen me at that height....

Back in 2000 I drove a hour and a half down to the deer camp and my buddy was supposed to leave the only key we had to the gate in a snuff can at the side of the gate. As I am sure you have all figured out he forgot to. I than was faced with a hour and a half drive home or a 5 mile hike into the camp down a dirt road. Two minutes later I was jogging down the dirt road in the dark in 80 degree October weather in my boxer shorts and tennis shoes. After a few miles I figured I would cut across a farmers field to save a little time. As I was stumbling along the edge of the field in the silence of the night I heard the biggest blast of my life. In Louisiana farmers like to put Co2 cannons around the edge of there fields to keep the deer out of their crops. Well I happend to be walking about 20 yards from one when it fired. Needless to say that farmer won't have to fertilize that part of the field next year. After my arival at the camp around 1:00 in the morning my former buddy drove me back out to the gate to get my truck. The next morning I did not see a deer.

I would do it all again for a day on the treestand.