It was very foggy this morning when I got in stand 35, and a light rain was falling all around me.  I was in the woods pretty early, so I turned on my red headlamp and settled in to read for a half hour or so.  As dawn began to approach, I used my binoculars to peer down into the hole in front of me.  I could just make out the shape of a deer moving through, but it only stayed for a minute.

As it got lighter, another deer, a big doe, came into sight.  I watched her for awhile but decided against the shot because it was so early and I was hoping a buck might show up.  Soon, one did:  a big bodied three point with dark amber antlers.  I watched him pass, and soon a pair of yearlings came in to feed. 

This kind of activity went on throughout the morning, with deer almost always in sight.  Down the road from our lease, a new group of hunters has started using the land adjoining ours, and once I heard a fast pair of shots from the land behind me.  Two big does crossed to my right, probably pushed out by those other guys.

As the morning wore on, I heard something walking in the woods behind me.  It was making a good bit of noise, so I figured it for a flock of turkeys.  As I watched, however, I saw a buttonhead buck shuffle out of the treeline to my left.  He was moving funny, like something was wrong with him, and I soon saw that he had a broken leg.  Although I hate to shoot a young deer, as I watched this one I could see that he would probably not make it through the winter.  Figuring that it was going to be the cold, the coyotes, or me, I decided on the latter and ended his pain with a quick spine shot.

He dropped and expired instantly.  I got down from my tree and dragged the young deer into a clump of bushes, hiding him from the sight of any other deer that might come through.  I climbed back into the stand and hunted for another hour or two before calling it a morning.  I loaded up the deer and took him to Hobbs Deer Processing, basically getting the whole thing cut into ground meat, asking them to save what they could of the backstraps.

Since the deer was so young, I decided to forgo taking pictures of him.