This year's hunt was quick, first day out me and and a friend were only in the woods for maybe 30 minutes and jumped a doe walking a logging road. Told him to keep walking the road, as we were approaching a clear cut, and I walked into the woods to hopefully steer that doe and whatever other deer may have been with her into the clear cut, I get maybe 20 yards into the woods and spooked that doe and a buck . So I get back onto the road, and my buddy was maybe 20 yards up the road and wasn't able to see the clear cut yet, so he continues walking and I waited a bit , and headed down the road. Off the left side of the road was a patch of tall timber with dense brush, so I take my time walking slow keeping my eyes in the timber , I get up the road a ways and my buddy at this point is about 100 yards down the road from me glassing the clear cut , I spot 2 deer in the thick brush walking away from me and down into a small revine but only seen them for a split second. I continue down the road , and spot the 2 deer again, and of course my luck again they are getting ready to cress a small hill . I was able to identify 1 was a buck , but were headed in the direction my buddy was in and I didn't feel comfortable taking the shot so I let them cress over the hill and proceeded to walk down the road to get a better angle, I get the corner of the road and can see my buddy , he's still glassing the clear-cut at this point, after I see him I go back to looking for the deer. And BOOM! About 30 seconds later, I about *censored* my pants and look over , my buddy is drawn and looking through his scope in the woods and not the clear cut.. LOL , he yells out he's coming your way , I look over and he's 30 yards from me slowly making his way through the thick brush, I pull my gun up , safety off got him in my sites , ready squeeze and nothing , look at the safety and red dots showing, but to late he gets out of my view. Upon further investigation I realized I didn't push the safety all the way.. rookie mistake, so we get in the woods looking for blood and can't find any blood , buddy gets discouraged and heads back towards the road , I continue on in the direction I last seen him going, so I'm walking through some thick thick brush along the top of a null with a small crick to my left, I get about 100 yards in and it opens up a little bit , I stop for a second and glass around and hear a branch break right below me was the same buck , he jumps the crick as soon as his hooves hit the ground on the other side it was lights out for him at maybe 20 yards . After getting to the buck and checking it out turns out my friend didn't hit him and my efforts paid off.
