grandest animal you laid eyes on last year...

[huntnmuleys]

title says it all, what was it?  the ONE most spectacular animal you saw last fall.  none of that "i have 3" business, just pic one.

mine was rather easy, it was on the muley hunt that I had so many pics of on here, yet I never got a pic of this guy.

I first saw him about an hour after id worked around one of the herds id been seeing in the general area I was hunting.  they weren't in a great spot that evening. anyway, I was working back their way to see if they were in a better spot when I saw "him"  he come out of a side canyon and simply started marching toward the herd. I could see several of the does but the terrain blocked a lot of the action. he never broke stride and even though I was a quarter mile away, I could see the purpose in his gait. I was moving in as fast as possible without being noticed in open country when he went out of sight and I herd the fight break out over the hill. i ran as fast as i could to cover distance, but the fight ended just before i was able to move through some buckbrush and get to where i could see the aftermath.  and that was when i finally got to study "him"...

i don't believe ive ever seen a bigger bodied deer.  he didn't have the highest scoring rack, as he wasn't overly wide and his forks were only so/so.  but he was HEAVY!  and, he was a warrior. blood ran down his face where one of the other buck's antlers had got him. he was battered and bruised, but he had the does and still looked as proud as when i was marching in.  there is no way in words i could ever paint a good enough pic of that buck, and yet for all of the actual pics i took on that hunt i didn't get one of him.  was too busy hunting and not busy enough sitting back and seeing the beauty of the situation.  i remember him though..


ok, your turn!  what was the number one animal you saw last fall?

[joe ashton]

I had a unusual year the grandest animal was mule deer does, whitetail does, one forky w/t, and zero elk.

[ChuckC]

I found a road killed skwerl that just HAD to have been on steroids.  His last utterances were " I'll be back. . " (sorry, Arnold, just teasing).  He was without doubt the biggest baddest fox skwerl I had ever seen.
ChuckC

[archer66]

I called in a beautiful Merriam's Turkey last spring.  He came in strutting, the sun was hitting him perfectly and he had the darkest black feathers with the whitest accents and his head was blood red and looked as big as a football.  I missed him.  Hope to see him again this spring.

[FerretWYO]

It would have to be this guy

 

[Krex1010]

I have to say the grandest animal I came across last season was a ruffed grouse. To say grouse are in my blood is an understatement, I truly love those birds and everything they represent in Pennsylvania. There was one in particular I flushed in October. It was one of those perfect, sun drenched fall days we all dream about, he flushed in an aspen patch, right next to an old stone wall, behind him you could see down a deep valley with two ridges rising beyond, the sun was just right that it shone through his wing and tail feathers, almost making him glow. I can still see that snapshot in my mind, clear as I can see the ice and snow outside right now.  We all have those moments, images of the world that stick with us forever.  When I'm too old to chase grouse, deer, trout and turkeys, I know I'll be sitting and replaying those images in my mind, and I have a feeling that ol ruff will be one of them.

[JDow3]

For me, it was a deer we dubbed tall boy. Been hunting him for 3 years. Big body 8 pointer with the tallest rack I've seen in person of any deer. Wide too,may past his ears.

I had him come in during bow season and got to full draw on him. I was so calm as I usually check all emotion until the animal is down. He came in right behind my tree about 7 years through a bunch of brush. I didn't have a shot but he didn't bust me. He kept making his way along this small just inside the woodline. He cut in at 32 yards right by a tree. He stopped and sniffed and when he put his head down I went to full draw. He came around past that tree and i bleated at him but he didn't stop. I bleated louder and he kept going. Same pace but now all I could see was his butt.

I took it for granted he would stop. I think he gave me the finger as he strolled away.

[shreffler]

In my neck of the woods huge bucks are a dime a dozen. It was November 7th, 35* and just starting to snow. Perfect cold day in the heat of the rut.
I was standing up in my stand, facing the ridge behind me. When I turned around and looked in the food plot, there he stood - about 40 yards away. I didn't even need to count the points to know he was a trophy.

Just as I grabbed my bow off the rack and started knocking an arrow he came trotting, nose to the ground, head on right at my tree. He was going to walk under me at 5 yards and turn broadside, a chip shot.

He got to about 20 yards and all of the sudden looked up right as I was reaching to turn my video camera on. The movement caught his eye and he slowly backed his way up and took a different trail right on the edge of the food plot just out of range and I never saw him again the rest of the season.

Awesome encounter but heartbreaking after all of the hard work that went into prepping for the season it was devastating to be that close on a huge mature buck.

My dad was actually about 80 yards away and watched the buck walk right up to me, but of course my radio was dead so I had no idea. He was at least a 140" buck and hands down the biggest buck I've ever seen on my little 30 acres of private land.

Alex

[VA Elite]

I didn't see anything that was grand. 1 st time in a long time i did not lay eyes on at least one mature whitetail buck.

[amicus]

Watched a wolf chasing geese around Prince of Wales. That was pretty cool.

[Goose smasher]

I got to see a ton of buffalo in Nebraska and South Dakota last spring while on a mermaids turkey hunt. Truly awe inspiring animals!

  Goose smasher

[Matty]

Originally posted by Goose smasher:
I got to see a ton of buffalo in Nebraska and South Dakota last spring while on a mermaids turkey hunt. Truly awe inspiring animals!

  Goose smasher

Now if I were hunting mermaids,... The buffalo, would pale in comparison!! Especially ones from Nebraska and the Dakotas.

[FerretWYO]

Originally posted by Matty:
 

Originally posted by Goose smasher:
I got to see a ton of buffalo in Nebraska and South Dakota last spring while on a mermaids turkey hunt. Truly awe inspiring animals!

  Goose smasher

Now if I were hunting mermaids,... The buffalo, would pale in comparison!! Especially ones from Nebraska and the Dakotas.

[Bladepeek]

I think I need to turn the "auto complete/correct" off on my cell phone too. It's going to get me slapped or arrested someday.

The grandest animal I saw last year was on the cover of a magazine. Other than that, I saw a couple of fork horn whitetails, a doe and some fawns. No turkeys; hardly anything except for squirrels and they were pretty average.

I'm hoping this year is going to be spectacularly successful.

[Crittergetter]

Mine was on a lease in south Tx. It was a 5-6 year old 10 point whitetail. Roughly 19" spread and long heavy tines. Had him at 13 yrds faceing me with tension on my string. He looked up at me and he turned to leave. As he quartered away I came to full draw. The next 1/2 second was in super slow motion as the arrow flew perfectly straight and struck him dead in the shoulder 3" forward of where I was looking. My heart sank. We never found him. Got pics of him 2 weeks later and another guys son killed him 2 weeks after that with a rifle. I never told the story on here because I'm still not over it!  Worst part was they sent me pics of the deer. Now that's just cruel!! Lol

[mangonboat]

Three way tie in 2014:

In early-September I had come back from kayaking with my wife and was putting the boats away when I came around the corner of the house and a brute of a black bear, maybe 450 pounds, was standing in my yard between me and the driveway. He lumbered off slowly, stopped several times to look back at me, then stopped in the driveway and took a huge crap in the middle of the drive before moving into the woods. Smart aleck!

 I was sitting in the middle of a stand of white oaks in SW Michigan in mid-October and was surrounded by deer . I shot a small buck the fourth time he came back for goodies and while waiting a reasonable amount of time before going after him, a monster 8 point with the body of a Shetland pony followed a doe under my stand and they fed there, inside 10 yards,  for 15 minutes. All I could do was watch.

That same evening, in a different stand on a different piece of property, a diving redtail hawk knocked a red squirrel off a branch and drove it into the ground directly below my stand.

[halfseminole]

Saw a full grown, well fed indigo snake.  Federally protected, endangered and lives in my yard.

[centaur]

Excluding a pretty good 6 point bull that I saw for fleeting seconds, it had to be this whitetail; Hard to tell in the picture, but he is a 5x5 with a couple of odd points to add to the fun. Hunted him most of the rut, and saw him numerous times, but never in range. The feeding deer is a mature doe, for size comparison. With luck, we will meet up next fall.
 

I played tag with a 180 typical last year. It was killed by a kid that drove his pickup within 50 yards of someone else's tree stand and shot it after a 15 minute sit. Go figure, I guess it is always better to be lucky than good.

[reddogge]

Mine was on a bowhunt the evening before rifle season in Dorchester Co, MD for Sika deer. I was on the ground backed up to a very thick greenbriar thicket and a stag bugled right in front of me very close and it made my hair stand up. I could hear him breath but couldn't see him. Dark came and he never showed however my hunting partner saw him come out of my woods onto the road and he was a magnificent 6 pt. stag. Putting two and two together he had snuck behind the greenbriar thicket within 20 yards of me downwind and I never saw or heard him. Point is I didn't see him but my partner did.