This morning I got up to the jingle of my cell phone. 4:45am, I laid there for 5min deciding if I was going to go hunting or not. I hadn't seen much this year and my bed was nice and warm. I thought..."can't kill them from here." and got ready. I was on the road in 15min after my shower and double checking I had all my gear. It was a warm morning; 46 degrees with a steady West wind at about 8mph. I have a great stand for a west wind, so that decision was made last night. I get to the base of my tree and I can see light on the horizon. I'm a little late it's about 6am. By 6:10 I'm sitting 20' up in my climber sweating to death. "well, I'm glad it a west wind" I thought. Straight to my east is a 8' drop that leads to the river bank. I'm about 28' above the bank. I need to be this high because to my west is a ridge, if I don't get high enough I'm eye level with it. At sunrise a red squirrel starts barking, I'm trying to find out what he's barking at but I can't find him. Finally I track him down on a lone oak limb staring straight at me 30 feet away. Great...He's barking at me. Well it took all my strength to ignore him and not send a spitfire right through his stupid little fuzzy face. After about 5 minutes of incessant noise he finally lost interest and left. As I was enjoying the morning saying some silent prayers thanking the good Lord for the ability to hunt and safety He has provided me I hear a "snap". Normally I would have turned right away but I thought it was an acorn hitting the ground. It wasn't. Next I heard a distinct footfall. As I looked around the tree to the north west, I see a good buck. I think to myself "Good enough" and never looked at his rack again until he was down. He took a sharp left and headed down to the river bank to my left. I couldn't ask for a better scenario to play out. I drew back as he walked in front of me place the pin on the lungs and squeezed the release. "WHAP" the buck hits the ground. "Son of a *****!!!" I thought (and probably said out loud). I nocked another arrow and waiting until he stopped moving and finished him off from above. I've never spined a deer before and I never aim for it. My aiming was off because of how high I was and he was a bit closer than I thought too. Anyway, he's hanging in the shed and I have taken two great bucks in the last two years. Good luck to everyone hunting this year and God bless. I'm one lucky guy.
