A few weeks before the season started I was fortunate enough to get permission to hunt a small 150 acre place here in Midland county. Within days I was running game cameras and putting up a blind, needless to say I was pumped! Being that this is my first season to bow hunt I have been willing to do anything and everything to get the chance at a good deer. I planted a food plot, checked cameras and scouted while hoping it would all pay off. I went almost a month with no pics, then on September 30th I got my first pic of a really good 10. We were thinking he was somewhere in the 140 range but it was all speculation. Like most mature bucks he didn't have much of a pattern 12 days passed between trail cam pics then he showed back up only to drift away for another 13 days. This time he hung around for a couple of days but only in the late night to early morning hours. I was in the stand and hoping for that one chance that just maybe he would slip up and I'd be there, but we just couldn't get on the same schedule. 20 days passed with not a single trail camera pic of him I was certain that he was dead being that gun season had started. November 15th I hunted the morning hunt and decided later that afternoon to not hunt the evening hunt, this would be a terrible decision. He showed up at 6:15pm it was the first and only pic I ever got of him in shooting light. Hoping that there might be a pattern I was in the blind Saturday because it marked the 21st day since his last sighting, but he was no where in sight. Today I got the call I hoped I would never get. A buddy's dad is a taxidermist here in town and called with the news of a big 10 that was shot out south of town near the area I hunt. The deer I had been chasing and working so hard for was shot sometime Tuesday by a near by rifle hunter. My heart instantly sank after seeing the pics of him and comparing them to my trail cam pics, only you guys would understand this, but in a way it felt like a part of me left. I hope the lucky hunter that shot him enjoys that big dude on his wall! I know i would have! He unofficially went 153 and some change.
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