Saturday Dec. 15th was a miserable day to be in a tree all day long, but this is how I hunt. The morning started out with a light rain pre-dawn and changed to freezing snow around 11 am and back to rain just after 1 pm.
Just after sunrise I had a nice buck appear 10 yards from my stand. I never heard him walk in with the snow on the ground and rain hitting my hood. He stood over my tracks leading to my stand for 5 minutes. I think he was trying to figure out how long ago these tracks were made. He busted me as I attempted to draw my bow. My arrow had frozen drops of rain all along the bottom of the shaft and made noise when is slid across my rest.
I also had a button buck appear near my stand shortly after that. At noon I had two does feeding out of range through the trees. They worked their way from east to west keeping their distance. I tried to entice them with a fawn call. They heard me call…they just didn’t care enough to stop eating.
At 3:15 I saw movement in front of me about 50 yards away and coming my way. I instantly noticed his right main beam was sticking straight up with a fork. This was a deer I knew I wanted to shoot. He quickly passed behind a pine tree giving me the opportunity to stand, get my bow, and turn to the right to make the shot. I stopped him with a mouth bleat as he entered my best shooting lane. He stopped perfectly and tried to find the source of the sound. By then it was too late. My Pro Hunter zipped right through both shoulders and I could see blood in the snow right away. 
I was overcome with adrenaline and a sense of accomplishment as he tore away from me. Before I lost sight of him I could see him running a little closer to the ground than when he started. I was unable to hear a crash in the snow, but was confident that it was going to be a short tracking job. He also did me a favor by running towards the road.
Upon recovery I thanked the Lord for a wonderful year and for the harvest of such a majestic animal. He will make a nice new addition to my Euro mount collection. Where I hunt, I have never seen a buck with a main beam that goes straight up like this one. You will also notice that this buck has been shot already in his front left leg. I didn’t notice any limp while he was walking or running.
