After seeing 7 or 8 different bucks the first weekend without seeing a “shooter”. I was looking forward to the second weekend of Firearms last weekend and made it to the stand by Thurday around noon where a spent a quite afternoon in the stand without seeing very much activity with the exception of some deer traveling back and forth in the swamp about 600 yards away from the stand. My father was coming up that night and we would be hunting together the next morning. On Friday morning about 8 a.m. dad hit the doe in a can and this deer snuck up behind him and when my father first seen him he was 20 feet away…he spooked bounding away, but for some reason after the 3 bound he stopped presenting my dad with a 40 yard broadside shot. Both my dad and I believe this was a satellite buck as we had not seen this one. We never did see the “Big10” during the rifle season, but I may give him another opportunity to show himself during Muzzleloader. I did get to see what I believe is the son of a 160″+ buck that my brother took last year. He is the future as he showed himself to me at about 30 yards this year. My guess was a 2 1/2 year old 8 that was already about 16 inches on the inside with good length and the curling-in main beams that my brothers had last year.
Dads buck…nice dark rack with both g1’s between 8 and 9 inches…lots of mass on the rack without a great deal of length, but very semetrical and a cool “lots of character” rack…deer dressed out slightly over the 200 lb mark. Looks like I am next in line to take a bigger buck…hopefully our management efforts will pay dividends in the future!
