GMMAT

I don't know what's funnier, Fran....

.....Your story....or me imagining the scenario as it unfolded in my head.

YooperMike

Thanks man!

MOTOWNHONKEY

Great stories guys. Being from Kansas big bodied deer are common. I do however remember the biggest racked buck I have ever seen like it was yesterday. I had a small 8 point come into my set up about 8:30 on a cool early November morning. He was just browsing the forest floor without a care in the world. Once he would get about 30 or so yards awayI would give a light grunt and he would come back searching. We played this game for the better part of an hour and he decided to bed down about 20 yds from my tree. I was enjoying watching him chew his cudd and groom himself when his head quickly turned to his left. Well there he was comming in behind a hot doe. I litterally think I said " Jesus" out loud when I seen him. This buck was thick, tall, and wide. Steam was comming from his nostrils in the cold morning air. I never seen a rack like that in the wild that had everything a hunter could dream of. He was simply amazing. I have a couple of 170 class bucks and this guy was way bigger. Well I never had an ethical shot at him but as he was going out of sight all I could see was his ivory white rack slowly blending back into the forest. For now he hangs on my memory wall.

GMMAT

Here's "the bull"....

Rough photo....but he's a wide-bodied bruiser for these parts.

Bullet Hole Bailey

Atleast i can see the big body but its hard to see much antler or any.

Rob/PA Bowyer

BBH, seeing a real bull mature buck has nothing to do with the antler he carries, sometimes he's on a downhill slide and is dwarfed by younger deer buck when you see one, you know it....

To answer your question Jeff, Yes.....

Washington Hunter

Some of you may remember these pictures, as they were only taken two or three years ago. Not much of a story, really. I spotted him on the way back from a bear bait site in Augustwhen baiting was going through legislature and there were no laws against it. I saw him two more times that year; once during the September season and once again during the November season.

The picture quality is horrible, but I pulled it from my old video camera.





Looking back on it, this is a nice buck. He isn't huge for my area, as Troy can attest to, but he was the first mature deer I had personally come across.

Okiaroslinger

My 2nd year of bowhunting I stumbled across a big 10 point that was using a soy bean field I had access to. I watched him all of August and September. By the time October 1st rolled around I knew his daily routine better than he did. Opening morning we he came under my stand I developed the one and only case of buck fever I have ever had. My legs became so weak I could not stand to shoot. I was unable to pull my bow back and shook so bad I thought I was going to fall out of the tree. Needless to say I calmed myself down and attempted a shot. But I misjudged the yardage (this was before range finders came around). I was heart broken. It was awesome though.

Rick James

Absolutely I remember and will never forget. 2nd season rifle hunting, I was sitting with my father in the same spot I had killed my first buck the previous year. It was a long skinny oak flat between two fields, probably 150 yards wide and 800 yards long. End of the oak flat came to the bottom of a mountain in the bottom of a long hollow that went up the side of the mountain. We would sit on the downwind side of the hollow and hunters would enter the end of the oak flat to walk in and push everything by us. A huge buck came through in a hurry with some does as other hunters walked in that morning and I will never forget. I was young, maybe 12 or so and handling the M77 .06 was cumbersome at best, I wasn't able to get on the deer fast enough when he stopped about 50 yards away in the middle of a group of does to look back at the direction the hunters were coming from. I did get a good look at him though for a few seconds. That was the last time I saw a mature buck alive and whilehunting for about 6 years.

Second incident which I remember even better was the fall of my senior year of highschool. I hunted like a madman that year and this was really the beginning of my obsession with archery hunting. I had bowhunted since I was 11 (I think) but this was the first year it became my priority over rifle hunting Anyhow, I quit all fall and winter sports so I could hunt more that year. Opening day of PA's archery season (1997) I filled my buck tag with a 3 pointer. This was before AR, and when I was still shooting anything I could. Later that week after school I was back out with no buck tag trying to fill some doe permits and sure enough possibly the biggest buck I have seen in PA came out of the young hemlock patch bordering some oaks that I was sitting on. I watched him feed within 50-100 yards of his patch of hemlocks for probably half an hour before he passed me broadside at around 25 yards and headed to a field that was downhill from us. He never knew I was there. I was so pumped on adrenaline and shaking so bad the leaves on the tree I was in were literally vibrating. He was a main frame 12 pointer that I am now guessing went mid to high 130's. He had a scar on his back too between his shoulder blades.........no wonder I never saw another buck out of that tree stand.

kshunter

I honestly can not remember for sure. Some of my earliest childhood memories are of deer. But of course they were of deer that my father and grandfather brought home.

Being in the wild, I remember one time where my oldest brother and I were walking in a creek on a deer drive. Niether of us were hunting quite yet, but were always involved in deer drives. I was probably about 1st grade and my brother was in 7th or 8th grade.

We were in a dry but deep creek bed, when he decided that we should climb up the side of the bank. So he starts crawling up the side, and when he gets to the top, he looks back down at me and says "Big Buck". So I get really excited and try to climb up the steep creek bed, as fast as I can, but have trouble doing it. He reaches down, grabs my hand and pulls me up. As soon as I'm at the top, I see a mature buck and a doe, maybe 25-30 yards away at the most. Then they ran off.

Nowadays, I can close my eyes and see the whole image still so clear. It's an image that will stay with me forever.