Photo by L. Voorhis

Sipping a cup of coffee two hours before dawn, I contemplated calling it a day before it even started. It was cold, cloudy and forecasters were calling for a chance of sleet and possibly snow. It was going to be an ugly morning, weather wise. But I figured the wind would be coming solidly out of the northwest, a good wind for the stand location I'd planned to hunt. I talked myself right back into going. It was the best conversation I had with myself all season.

"What the heck," I murmured. I would go and see what happened. It was the weather that was making me want to go, knowing it might just make those late-season bucks move before the front blew through.

With my climbing stand over my shoulder, I began the trek down the trail I'd marked with tacks a couple of days earlier. I remembered a similar trip during September, when I was sweating before I even climbed a tree. I figured this couldn't be any worse than that. Actually, the walk in and climbing the tree kept me warm that morning.

If there were other hunters out that morning, I didn't pass any of them on the road. I was positioned 25 feet up the tree an hour before it was light enough to see, and by first light, I was eagerly looking through my binoculars. I was hunting a cutover area with a thicket winding through a low spot in the field as my focal point. I knew there had been a lot of deer activity here recently. I felt this was a good setup for a nice buck and the morning ideal to catch him moving.

Ten minutes after I could see my target area, I spotted two does slipping through the thicket. Then a very symmetrical 6-pointer slipped along, but that was not the deer I was looking for. Be patient, I figured. Deer are moving and the wind, while not too strong, was solidly in my favor. In the next hour, I saw three more deer; it seemed the cutover was alive with deer that morning.

Then I saw something that looked like a set of antlers where nothing had been before. I studied the object closely, and thought I could make out the parts of a deer behind the thicket. Not a problem; there was plenty of time. Finally, the deer moved and it was a buck. I quickly counted at least four points on one side, very high and wide racked.

Binoculars down, scope up. The buck was moving much slower and more cautiously than the other deer I'd seen. But he was most certainly slipping through that thicket, using the cover as a shield extremely well. Over the course of the next three or four minutes, I lost sight of him twice but picked him up again quickly as he moved along.

I selected a good place for the shot about 10 yards in front of where he stood, got the gun propped and ready, and when he stepped out, the .30/06 did its job and the 9-pointer dropped in his tracks. With a body weight of about 180 pounds, he was certainly a nice buck . . . maybe not a record-book buck, but with only three days left in the season, it was my best buck of the year. I was proud to take him.