There's a great reason to keep a diary on hunting trips. It's so you can keep the days and the events straight.
Maybe it's my age or I.Q. but I can't remember what happened when. I know Terry got pretty intense in his pursuit of "Lucky" and the discussions at night were more game plan strategy than anything.
My own days were busy enough, and I anticipated a nice buck showing up every time I was in the woods.
If you drew a straight line from my stand to the oak/pond site it couldn't be more than a few hundred yards, yet I don't believe I was seeing any of the deer that Terry was.
"Lucky" sure never showed up.
I saw bucks alright... probably at least 4 different ones.I could have shot one for sure but even with the relaxing of the point restrictions due to CWD I wasn't interested in burning my tag on him.
The oak tree up the hill continued to show deer late in the day, scrounging for the remaining acorns. I thought about a ground set up there, but most of the deer wandered down my way anyway so I never did that.
One evening I looked up to see a lone deer feeding under that oak. It finally moved out into the beans and fed around for 15 minutes or so before I saw two more deer cross over from the tree farm.
Had any of them sported decent racks I'd have seen it from where I was. I raised my Leica's just out of curiosity.
Interestingly enough the last two deer were little bucks. A spike and a narrow, high,6 point. As they finished looking around under the oak, they moved out into the beans.
That made the lone animal (a young doe) pretty nervous and she scooted down the hill toward me. It looked like she would hit the gap on my left and cross over the fence behind me.
Either that or she'd come by straight out in front of me. Either way, she would be in trouble.