Bul_krzy,
Yes, that could have been me. I did go in the evening of the 16th, and ran into 3 guys coming out. Did I ask you about whether the trail connected back to the road? If so, that was me.
Ransom, I shot a nice mistake buck, but not what I was hoping for. I passed up a bunch of 140-160 class bucks the first couple of days. Day 3 I spotted a nice even 5x5 (4x4 with eyeguards) that was about 27-28" wide and would have scored about 175. He was heading down into the timber and I rushed my stalk. He busted me at a little over 400 yards and I missed him as he was looking straight up at me (when I got home I went to the range, and my rifle was shooting about 5" to the right at 200 yards - probably enough to result in a clean miss at 400 yards. Not sure what knocked my scope off line).
I watched the buck walk off with a bunch of smaller bucks and does through the spotter, and he definitely wasn't hit. I ran across the mountain to get ahead of him and ran into the whole group of them just as they were about to head into the dark timber. Most of the group were behind a clump of trees, but two bucks came out into the open - the big one (so I thought) and a small 2 or 3 pt. I wacked the big one, and walked up to a heavy, 24" wide 3 point that scores right at the 150" mark. What really added insult to injury was that I had passed up this same buck twice the day before, and had even talked to another hunter who'd also seen and passed up this buck.
Here's a pick of the buck that I shot:
Here's a pic of him the day before, the first time I passed him up:
What can I say - another lesson learned, and another big buck lives another day.
bcmulie
