Public Land Whitetail!

Hello everyone I thought I would share this story with you. I got this buck a couple times on camera over the course of our bow season, I was never able to see him during daylight until two days before our gun season opened. So I hung a stand just outside of his bedding area. Opening morning of gun season, I found myself in the stand an hour and a half before first light. About an hour into legal shooting time, two yahoo's come waltzing under my stand, looking at me the whole time, and proceed to set up less than 100 yds from me......on the ground! Now, just a note, I am a little over 1.5 miles in the middle of a swamp as the crow flies and it takes me over an hour to get to my stand each time. So the last thing I expected was to see another person, especially right under my stand! Paying no attention to the wind, (I don't think they were paying attention to very much to be honest)they set up directly upwind of the bedding area, so as you can imagine, I didn't see very much that morning.
You couldn't have ordered a better night to be in the stand, hardly any wind, deer were moving EVERYWHERE! My senses were in high gear! As the evening dwindled down, I thought I was again making the long, wet trek back to the truck empty handed, so I did one quick rattling sequence. About two minutes later I saw movement out of the corner of my eye, and sure enough, after a quick look with my binos I saw this was the buck I was after! I waited for him to clear a small clump of brush, as he stopped I steadied on his vitals and squeezed the trigger! I saw him run about 20 yds in my direction and do the dead-deer-backflip!!

I am SO glad I was wearing my harness, cause I was shaking so bad I know I would have fell out of my stand!! I couldn't have been happier as I walked up to him! He had six points on his left and four on his right. His inside spread is 22"! His body is MASSIVE!! After a four hour pack-out we finally had him back at the truck. I have to say thanks to my brother, his girlfriend and another buddy of ours, without them I think I would still be out there!!