I haven't hunted as much I would have liked to this year, definitely not as much as in years past, but I sealed the deal on a successful season and a freezer full of meat on Thursday night.
The buck came in to a feed pile with less than 5 mins of daylight left. I steadied the cross-hair, made a great shot and I knew it was over pretty quick as I heard the buck crash behind me, no more than 50 yards away.
We have a few different stands on the property and 3 trail cams. We've never seen this guy before, yet he knew where the food was and was pretty hot to trot getting up to it, regardless of the 30-40 km winds. In this particular stand, we had a light 8 pt buck on camera that I was hoping to catch up with, with only 2 weeks to go, but I was very surprised and beyond excited when I walked up to him and realized pretty quickly that this wasn't the deer we had on camera.
Quite the feeling to put your hands on a mature buck for the first time.
He ended up having 11 scoreable pts with his split brow tines. He's been caped and headed for taxidermy....I can't wait to see him again on the wall.
The pictures aren't of great quality, I'm a little dissapointed in that, but I'll be sure to share some good ones of the mount when I get it back in the spring. Best of luck to those still heading into the woods with a tag in their pocket.