As daylight began to approach, I saw that there was already a doe out in front of my stand.  I watched her for a good while, making the decision early not to shoot her.  As the loggers started up their work in the distance, the doe raised her head, looked around, then quickly left the area.  I settled in to wait to see if another one would show up.

Within about 15 minutes, I saw another deer emerge from the woods a good ways past where the doe had been.  Another doe, I thought.  I raised my binoculars to be sure, and was shocked to see a pretty massive set of antlers on this deer.  I quickly grabbed my rifle, found the deer in the scope and fired.  As I recovered from the recoil, I was pretty sure I saw the deer stumble, but I couldn't be absolutely certain.  I did see it run off into the woods to the left.

In a great state of excitement, I called Ted on the radio to tell him I had just shot at a big buck.  I had visions of this being another scenario like last year, where I got a shot at a nice one but ended up missing.  I told Ted that I was going to go ahead and look for him while he kept hunting.  Ted said that he had a spike at his stand and would stay in place for now, but to call him if I needed help.  I got out of the stand, grabbed some marking tape, and walked down to where the deer had been.

I made two fairly quick passes at the area where the deer may have stumbled, but I saw no blood or tracks.  I moved over to the edge of the woods where he would have run in, then began to slowly search for signs that I had hit him.  Within a few minutes, I found a very small scuff mark in the dirt, then found a single tiny spot of blood on a stalk of grass.  I radioed Ted again to tell him I had blood.

I marked the start of the blood trail, then began to slowly follow it into the woods.  There was not much blood visible, and the sun wasn't high enough in the sky to give me much light.  I radioed to Ted that the trail was not heavy, then suddenly I found a big splash of blood.  I continued to follow it up and down hills until it finally started to give out.  As I looked around to see which way he might have gone from the last blood mark, I saw him laying not 10 yards from where I was. 

I again called Ted and told him that I found the deer, and that it was a good one.  He asked if I wanted help now, and knowing that we had a long drag ahead of us and I wanted to get this monster to the taxidermist, I told him that I hated to end his hunt early, but yeah, we needed to go ahead and get him out.  I followed my marking tape back to the logging road, then walked back to my stand.  From there, I gathered my gear, then walked to the truck and drove down to get Ted.

We made the drag in two or three stages, took a few pictures, then loaded the deer onto my truck.  We took him over to Arnold's house to show him off, then took him to the processor to drop the meat off and get him caped out.  From there we went to Jordan's taxidermy, where I chose to have him mounted in a semi-sneak position.  He weighed in at 175 pounds.