Its no hog, but it'll eat good.
Headed to my GMU early friday morning before the opener. Set up camp on a good friends property, and headed out for some scouting. Found a monster 2 point that I have seen 3 times now over the years. Still no eye guards. Its a huge buck, huge rack, just refuses to be legal year after year. Saturday my son and I hiked in to a good spot, and he kept complaining about his feet being cold, so I only know of one way to warm up feet and that is to walk. We hiked farther and farther, he is only 5, so it was slow going, but he is a trooper. We made it to a really nice canyon with lots of breaks cut into the sides of the mountains. We were high, and had a good vantage point. We sat down and I started glassing, and he started playing with grass and rocks. He says hey dad, are those deer? I looked down into one break, and sure enough there were two does feeding. One of them lifted its head, and when it turned I saw it was a spike with 2 or 3 inch spikes sticking straight up! Not legal, but fun to look at. I ranged them at 125 yards. After a while of watching them while I was glassing, he says dad, that little one is coming towards us! The spike winded us, and walked straight towards us. He came to about 55-60 yards to a bush and starting pawing at the ground and rubbing his "antlers" in it. Then he semi-circled us and kept getting "bucky" and watching us and getting closer and closer. He was about 15 yards away, and I thought he was gonna charge us, so I decided that it was time to get back, and go try somewhere else I had seen a few does the day before. We started walking back to the truck, and I had a feeling something was watching us, so I turned around and there was the spike 50 yards behind us. We kept walking and every time I turned around, that spike was 50 yards behind us. When we got back to the truck he looked really confused, kind of like "now what?" and slowly turned and headed back in the direction we came from. It was like a lost puppy. The rest of the day I didnt see any more deer at all. Sunday I had a cut off time of noon for hunting so I could be back to home at a decent time, and back to work Monday since getting time off work was not gonna happen that week. Sunday morning I went to a friends tree stand prior to daylight and waited till about 45 minutes after sunrise and had seen 3 does. I decided to head higher up the mountain and got in the truck and drove up. Got out of the truck to go for a hike, walked about 15 yards, saw this buck and he took off. I circled the hill he went over figuring he would stop on the other side and wait to see if I was following it. When I rounded the corner of the hill, he was standing broadside to me at 75 yards looking back over his shoulder to see if I was coming behind him. I glanced the area for orange, and general background, raised the bino's, confirmed legal 3 point, lowered the glasses, raised the rifle, and bang-flop. Got it gutted, in the truck, and back to camp. Used friends tractor to hang it and skin it, got him in the bag, and in the back of the truck, packed up camp, and was back home by 6 for unloading and getting ready for work Monday morning. My son had a blast, and is already talking about next year. Best part of the hunt was a picture my son drew at school based on a story. He drew the truck, trailer, and deer, and was really talking up a storm about his hunting trip where his dad harvested a "monster deer"...lol...
