My doe

Well, it wasn't a 13pt buck like last year, but a large doe will eat just fine!

Opening weekend on Saturday I didn't see even a single deer, but I did have 7 different hunters walk within 30 yards of where I was sitting. Nothing helps draw deer in like having deer hunters in bright orange walking right by you making tons of noise. That Sunday morning, I had about a 6-pt buck walk in on me. He was about 60 yards away and I decided to take aim. Right as I was about to shoot, someone/something broke a branch behind the deer and it spooked him so he jumped a bit right as I shot. I still thought I had a pretty decent shot and he went down like a ton of bricks. I jumped up and ran over towards him and he was pretty much just laying there. Then when I got about 10 yards away, he jumped up and took off like a bullet, jumped a 6 ft barb-wire fence and onto private property.

After that, I was pretty po'ed at myself for not putting another round in him while he was down. I didn't see another deer the rest of the day, so coming into the final weekend of the season, I wasn't overly optimistic.

I got out to my spot about 6AM like I have done every day of deer season when I go out (which means getting up at 4:45... 4:45 AM that is). It was pitch black until just about 7AM. By 9:30 I hadn't seen a deer, but I had heard a fair amount of shooting.
At about 10:15 my legs were getting sore so I got up to walk around a bit. About 5 minutes later, I heard a shot relatively close to me, so I headed back over to my spot to see if perhaps the hunter was shooting at a group of deer and maybe by chance 1 or 2 would get scared in my direction. 10 minutes later, i had just gotten back by my spot and hadn't even had a chance to sit down when a doe and 2 fawns came into my line of view about 150 yards away. They were obviously quite spooked and were carefully picking their way through the trees slowly working their way across my field of view angling slightly towards me.

They were just about to a clearing which was about 65 yards away and I decided that if the big doe stepped into that clearing, I was going to take a shot. She stopped right before the clearing and her 2 fawns caught up and were now right behind her. As soon as she stepped into the clearing, I fired. She jumped pretty much straight up, so I knew I had made solid contact. All 3 deer scattered in different directions. 1 stumbled and fell about 5 yards from where they were when I had shot before it took off running. I assumed that this was the deer I had shot, so I took off after her. She gradually got beyond my line of sight and there was no blood trail anywhere. I was getting kind of depressed thinking that for the second time this year a deer that I had a decent shot at got away. I decided to go back to my stand, grab the rest of my gear and go to the spot where I had shot them and see if I could find a blood trail to follow.
When I got to my spot, there was a little asian dude about 20 yards behind my spot standing there looking at me. He asked me "You hunting along?" "Yep" I replied. "OK" he said giving me a big grin and a thumbs up. I didn't think much of it, so I went to look for the spot where I shot the deer. There was a bunch of blood on the ground and as I looked where it headed, about 40 yards away there lay my doe!

I ended up hitting her right through the neck hitting a major artery causing her to bleed out pretty quickly. As I was walking to her, I saw another little asian dude walking about 20 yards on the other side of her.
"You shoot that?" he asked.
"Yep" I replied.
"OK, she big, it bigger than me!"
"Yeah, she's pretty good sized."
"Yeah, bye now. OK!" and then he gave me the same smile and thumbs up. Whatever I thought, asians can be strange people :)

I field dressed her, and then began the long arduous task of dragging her out of the woods, which is a difficult enough chore when there is snow to slide her on, which of course, there was none. It was also about 50 degrees by this point and I was dressed in full gear due to the 20 degree temps from the overnight, so I was sweating like a fat kid on prom night for the entire 1+ hour that it took to drag the deer out of the woods plus putting the deer on the back of my cavalier and the first 20 minutes of the drive home.

Not a buck, but it'll taste just great!