LAST EDITED ON Nov-11-17 AT 01:23PM (MST)[p]>Good buck mike!! You or john?
John and I were sitting together opening night of deer season and for some reason the good bucks were still coming out well before dark and some were still running together. We were watching several nice bucks at about 5PM, which was a good 1 1/2 hours before dark. More kept coming out of the one canyon nearest us that is private property where they like to bed. Over the next 15 minutes or so we had 8 branch antlered bucks on the hill above us at about 200 yards feeding contentedly like it was summer! None were what we were looking for, as we had seen two shooters that would go in the 170s near there in September and early October. As we were watching them I noticed another deer below the bunch working it's way up the hill and it took it about 5 minutes to get up high enough for us to see it good and when he raised his head we both said "holy #####", LOL! We had not seen him before, so we looked him over real good and John asked if I was going to shoot him. BIG mistake, as I told him I'd pass because I thought a couple we had seen during scouting were better and it was just the first night of our two week season. John decided he was good enough for him and let him have a .270 accubond in the ribs when he turned broadside. The buck ran back to the east and stopped about ten yards from the private property where he'd come from. He was wobbily, but since he was so close to the private property I told John to shoot him again. He shot just as the buck fell over and the shot hit the back of his lower jaw and that is why jm77 mentioned the wound you can see in the picture. Since we had another hour until shooting time was over we sat right where we were hoping one of the other good bucks would show up, but all we saw were a couple more small ones. Right as shooting time was up we went up and I took a couple pictures of the buck where he died and that's why it's almost dark in the picture. He was even better than I had thought and I never saw anything close to that buck the rest of the season and ended up eating my tag. To remember that night I think I'm going to take some pictures after John gets the pedestal mount of him back next year and have one blown up and framed for my man cave here at the house.
