So today turned out to be my best day deer hunting this season.  Saw double the amount of deer I have seen any other day and had a good feeling, then saw a legal buck staring back at me through the fog.  Watched him and his buddy the spike for a minute before they jetted, then kept on up the ridge still feeling good. 

Doubled back down the mountain toward where I thought a trail would be, found an old grown over logging road and started working slowly back toward the truck.  Road opened back up to a well groomed trail and I kept slowly pushing along, but not slow enough.  I caught movement after hearing a thump and caught the backside of a large set of antlers on a very large bodied buck, but only saw it for about 2 or 3 seconds    I have a threshold for little bucks I won't shoot, in between bucks I have to think about, and big bucks I don't even have to ponder.  He was the latter.

He was with a doe (which made me wonder if the rut had already kicked in ) and absolutely dwarfed her, but after he left she stuck around and I noticed that she had a big enough body to shoot if she had a rack, so the dude was just plain big!

I'm bummed but happy at the same time.  It's been a while since I've seen a buck big enough to get me excited, but seeing 3 bucks in a matter of a few hours is a tough one to pull off around here.  Should have about the last 5 days of the season to go out and will hopefully have a friend with me for a couple days to poor over that area!