The morning started out fairly slow. We were sitting on one side of a ravine and counting on shooting a deer on the opposite ridge. By 9 o'clock we had seen two does and glimpsed a buck (walking away, of course). At that point I thought it would be fun to give Luke his first lesson in still hunting. The leaves were soaked from an early morning rain and the cloud cover made everything easy to see. We crossed the ravine and spent the next two hours walking 150 yards. When we came over a small rise I saw a dark spot a ways off and whispered for Luke to stop. When I put the binoculars up, I saw a good buck! We closed the distance to 100 yards, but Luke didn't take the shot. The buck walked off after a twenty minute show.
Ok. Fast forward to 4:15 this afternoon. The East-Northeast wind allowed us to tuck ourselves back in some thornbushes on an alfalfa field surrounded by woods. Luke had seen some big bucks feeding near the gate of this field a week prior, and this particular wind blew our scent straight away from the field. At a quarter to 6 three does entered the field, apparently entertaining me and putting Luke to sleep. All of a sudden I look to our right and see antlers exiting the woods, just over a small rise. I whispered,
"Luke, Luke! There's a nice buck!" He woke up, then got his gun up on his knee. It took a minute, but when the buck stepped over the rise I whistled twice to get the deer to stop. Boom! At twenty yards, it was easy to see a hole in that picture perfect spot. It wasn't so easy to keep Luke from taking off at a dead sprint after the deer.
Just kidding. He was certainly on his feet in a flash, but he knew we had to wait a few minutes. We packed the truck up to busy ourselves, then took off on a short 30 yard blood trail. End result: 136 6/8 inches of total antler and one heck of a story.
