Thanks guys. This is a private area up near Forsyth....this buck, I swear, had 9 lives. I was making my way through the pind ridges when I saw does, then him, and thought "nice heavy frame, but narrow", that is until he looked up and I saw double long cheaters on each side. Later we found out he'd been hit once a few days before. He was walking kinda funny but obviously was rutting. The cheater points tipped the scales for me, so I took aim at him...
I confess buck fever at that point. I thought I was over that years ago.
Anyways, to make a long story short, I hit him high but didn't spine him....he appeared broken down on the back half, but a few min. later he walked slowly up the hill following his does. I couldn't believe it. He couldn't run at that point. I followed and glassed him into a timbered draw at a half mile or 20 minutes later, and he was hurtin'. We waited 4 hours before we went into the draw, 2 of us walked the whole thing (over a mile) with no luck. Then it was getting dark, and as I was moving up out of the end of the draw, I saw more deer at a half mile or so in the next draw south.
At that point I figured he could just as well be in the next draw over, at that point, since he wasn't laying dead in the first draw.
I made my way south, saw a doe staring into the new draw for 10 min, figured I better look. A couple hundred yards later and I saw a nice buck just standing halfway into the draw at 300 yards. I put up the glasses and could not believe it when I saw all the trash...it was the same wounded buck, acting like he was staring at does again. Then it was a 10-min stalk and down he went.
Sometimes the hunting gods smile on us....