I awoke around 5:00 a.m. as I normally would during deer season. It was Thanksgiving day and I wanted to get out as soon as I could. The weather couldn't have been better, cold and very little wind. After getting ready and eating a Snickers Bar breakfast, I headed out. It was cold enough out to put a frost on the ground so that made a quiet entrance pretty hard, but I arrived early so that gave me some time to be careful as to how much noise I made going to my stand. I had decided to go back to the tripod stand on the end of Squirrel Ridge. I had been there the day before. Although I've heard that it isn't good to hunt the same stand day after day, I went back anyway, and it would prove to be a good choice this time. I had been in my stand for about 2 hours and hadn't seen or heard anything. Then, about 8:00 a.m., he showed up. . . one of the biggest bucks I had ever seen in the wild. I couldn't get a good view of how many points he had but I could see that his rack was past his ears. I raised up, cold and nervous, and shot. I guess where I was so excited, I jerked and shot under him - he ran about 20 yards and I got off another shot. He dropped like a ton of bricks! After I got out of my stand and saw what I had got I danced for about 10 minutes out of joy. I had my first 9 point! |
