My 2007 buck

My deer season started off hard this year. The first day of archery season I put an arrow in a very large buck. I quit hunting for a few weeks and put in a lot of time trying to find him (about 40 hours myself + 20 hours of help from friends). Hopefully he survived but in reality he probably died in some thick brush where I would have a very difficult time trying to find him.

Once rifle season opened I decided to move on and find a buck to put my tag on. I'm not very good at passing on deer and finally couldn't keep my finger off the trigger.

I spotted him from about 3/4?? of a mile and put a stalk on him. He moved before I was able to get close enough for a shot but I was able to find him on the other side of the hill. Unfortunately he saw(smelled??) me the same time I saw him and he took off only giving me an questionable shot as he ran through the brush at about 250 yards. After running about 150 yards I was able to cut him off as he tried to circle back. My brother Brad ranged him standing broad side at 250 yards and I had a good rest across my pack. I hesitated for a minute because there were a few blades of grass a few yards in front of my rifle barrel. He also did not appear to be 24" wide I judged him to be when I was looking at him through the spotting scope earlier. After about a minute the buck and his two smaller buddies decided they didn't trust me and were going to leave. I was already worked up and had buck fever so I decided to take the shot when he was pushing 300 yards away on brisk walk. I couldn’t tell if I had hit him so I went over there to look for blood. After about 10 minutes I found some blood and started to follow the trail. About an hour and a 500 yard blood trail he jumped from a patch and I was able to put a tag on him.

The first shot turned out to only nick his leg. It didn't hit the bone and only scraped the outside of the muscle but took out a chunk of hide. Considering how superficial the wound was I'm surprised he left a 500 yard long blood trail.
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This is also a buck I took pictures of on June 15th. He has a couple distinctive slits in his ears. The pictures below show him on June 15th.
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Thanks to everyone who was there. Without their help I would have likely not been able to put a tag on him.

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The last picture shows my brother Brad and I with the antlers from our bucks this year.
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