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
![Shake :shake:](https://board.marlincrawler.com/Smileys/marlin/shake.gif)
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
![Huh??? ???](https://board.marlincrawler.com/Smileys/marlin/huh.gif)
) 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!