A Tough Pass but a Great Encounter

Tonight I sat in my usual stand, along the foodplot in Hoot's Timber.  A week and a half ago I created a mock scrape line along the plot edge and hung a scrape dripper over one of them.  I was hoping the scrapes would be active but when I got on stand I saw they were not.  It was warm and I was beginning to doubt I would see another deer after I kicked up a bedded spike buck on my way in.  Right at sundown I noticed a doe moving through the timber 100 yards to the north of me.  She disappeared into a drainage but it gave me optimism and I re-evaluated my hunt.  It was a little warm but it wasn't hot, and deer were on their feet. 

It's the time of year when bucks are moving during daylight hours but they aren't getting too aggressive.  That being said as pre-rut gets going they are slowly establishing a pecking order so they can be curiously responsive to certain calling.  I brought my grunt tube with me for that very reason and I decided to give it a blind shot.  I gave an easy "grunt, grunt." Nothing too aggressive, just an "I'm a buck and I'm in the area" call.  Immediately I saw movement about 100 yards out to my left.  I saw a glimpse of an antler and I picked up my binos and saw this guy:

It was Tall Boy and he was coming on a rope!  Some how he had snuck into my area undetected.  My heart pounded as I grabbed my bow and got ready.  He came to 10 yards and turned broadside and began munching an acorn.  (just a side note, it literally sounded exactly like that stupid acorn cruncher call that my brother has- maybe he's on to something)  Twenty thoughts raced through my mind:

History has proven I don't get many shots at good bucks on the ground I hunt.  However the rut is just around the corner- you never know.  But I don't have as much time to hunt this year, it would be nice to be done now.  The rut is just around the corner.  But what a perfect shot though.  Do I really want to clean and process a deer after butchering 4 hogs this weekend?  But look at how tall he is.  It's sunday night and it's warm, you have to go to work in the morning.  But his main beams almost touch.  This thing would spoil hanging in the garage tomorrow before you could get a chance to cut it up.  But what a shot.  It looks like he has a smaller body.  But his rack is sooo tall.  It is narrower than I thought.  His feet look small.  His ass is rounded off, nope definately not square.  Doesn't have a big belly.  He's a 2 1/2 year old deer.  Pass.  

Whew.  What an encounter.  My first buck encounter in over a year.  Awesome!  I keep looking at that trail cam pic and I keep telling myself he looks bigger in the photo than in real life.  The best way I could describe it to you is that he is a Texas deer- his smaller body size makes his rack look huge.  I'll bet he's a 120 class buck.  I really hope I don't see him again because if it's November 30th and he walks past my stand I don't know if I could let him walk away again.  I'm still glad I passed him even though some shmuck will probably make swiss cheese out of him during shotgun season.  I can only hope he makes it the next year or two and keeps living in my 7 acre block of timber but lets be realistic here, the odds aren't in his favor, nor mine.  Stay tuned, rumor has it my brother filled a tag tonight over in his neck of the woods.  Happy Hunting and God Bless!