HuntingNet.com Forums - My Dec 9th hunt the 1 that got away

Ok first off this buck is doing fine, he has been sited twice since, so here goes; I got up in the stand about 5:30 while waiting for sunup I dozed off for a little over an hour. When I wake up I take a look around and there is a nice 9pt walking towards my feeder. It is about 135 yards from my stand to feeder and he was I would guess about another 20 yards behind it walking towards it. I put my scope on him and watch him letting him move closer. After about 2-3 min he stops and turns broadside and starts a sniffin the air. I then get my shot lined up and he starts slowly walking towards the woods to the left, he is barley moving so I take a couple deep breaths and get ready to take the shot, right as I am pulling the trigger he stumbles, I guess it startles em and he jumps sky high and takes off like a bat outta hell, this all happened in the blink of the eye and right when I was pulling the trigger on em. I was really worried that I had gut shot him because of it so I call my grandfather and tell him to wait about 30 min and bring the dogs out. So I am sitting there in my stand sweating bullets and feeling sick ( this is the first time I have made a bad shot) waiting so I don't scare the deer into running even further. So then after about 45 min my grandpa shows up with the dogs and we go out to the area he was at and start looking around right away we saw something, it was his tail, I had shot it clean off! I looked around for whatever he had stumbled on and found a small hole the was only about 6-8 inches deep looks like a hog rooting something up. So I didn't get my buck but I kept the tail =) guess he was blessed better to lose a tail than his life. Two days later my grandpa saw him again for the first time he was hunting a different stand and did not know it was the same one till he put the scope to it and saw what it was missing. He decided that someone must be looking out for him and it wouldn't be right to intervine because he might make someone higher up mad so he let him go. Anyways just thought Id share, talk about being relieved when I was reassured that he was doing fine!

Edited for spelling