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Tim Cahill – Ft. Leavenworth, KS

After seperating from T.J., Dad went to the general area where he had left his watch. Sitting down, he leaned back against his backpack. Snap! Dad realized that the animal making that noise was a lot bigger than a squirrel. Dad slowly stood up and waited. The noise sounded close, but it was still dark. For forty-five minutes Dad listened to this deer circle him.

Finally, as it was getting light Dad saw him come through some firs. Problem. When the buck stopped, his heart was behind a big tree. “No problem,” Dad thought. Raising his gun he got the chest in his sights, put his finger on the trigger, and prepared to wait until the buck took a step forward. BOOM! Oops! the trigger was more sensitive than he thought.

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Jim Bailey – Billings, MT

Dad had been sick for a while and wasn't hunting much, but on this day Preston wanted to go with dad to check cows. When we did Preston spotted this deer for his pops and after a well placed neck shot he helped me gut and load the deer. Then of course he had to show it off to his big sister Morgan when we got home.
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Mark Gilliland

Here is my big buck and it was the shortest hunt I have ever been on. it is actually a really exciting story even though I was only in my seat for less than 60 seconds! I prayed on my way out to hunt that I could bring home a big deer for my wife to fill her freezer she was sad as I hurt her earlier and I wanted to bring her something special.

I chose the area in my woods to hunt, then set out a scent bomb, chose my tree and set out a few more. I climbed my tree with my climing tree stand and heard a grunt as I got to my stopping point. I froze and looked to see what was out there. a nice 4 point buck started walking toward me, i thought great, God sent a buck, but I didn't even have a bow up in the tree yet! Then he traversed the creek nearby and kept his distance since he either didn't see any does or he might have seen me. Once he left, I pulled up my bow and rattling antlers and sat down. I loaded an arrow and turned the saftey off, put a peice of hunters gum in my mouth and within 15 seconds another buck was coming in from another direction. it was cloudy and dim in the deep woods so I could only tell that he was large and had a decent rack...i had no idea how nice he was until I got down. He was 250 lbs after field dressing him, he was the largest deer I or any of my hunting buddies have ever seen. He was a 12 point, but lost one in a fight. Both of his ears are split all the way down and they say he was about 6 yrs old. I see that God decided that a 4-point was not a good enough prize to bring my bride!

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Alex Townsend

Hi my four boys my dad and myself all rifle hunt here in Wisconsin. Next year my two daughters will be old enough to also hunt with us . But this year my 20 year old son got married and his wife who hunts came along. So the group keeps getting bigger every year. She actually could of killed the buck in the picture but let it go for her new 14 year old brother in-law Alex to shoot his first big buck. My 14 year old got a nice buck and my 20 year old got a nice wife. The deer is a nine point buck and weighed around 210 lb. dressed out.
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Paul Kersh – Oklahoma City, OK

I only started hunting a few years ago. I can truly say that I have "Buck Fever". Over Thanksgiving I was given the chance to hunt with some family members at a place that was known to have some big bucks. Up until now all I had ever seen were does. I took a doe with my bow earlier in the month but I was anxious to take a buck. Well, I was blessed when this 8 pointer walked out on the same fence line I was sitting on. There are just not too many things more exciting than getting your first buck.

As this deer walked along side a doe, he made his way directly to me. If he had not turned he would have walked directly on top of me. But as luck would have it he turned broadside at about 75 yards and my 270 short mag. found it's mark. What a great Thanksgiving night that was!

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Andrew Lair – Troy, OH

Andy started bow hunting with his friends when he was fifteen years old. He grew up in a rural area and his grandfather owned a farm. Since then, many years have gone by, and Andy has trodden through life and through fields, harvesting deer, and raising a family of his own, and still holding onto a dream of getting a shot at a monster buck!

It was a November day during gun season of 2007. Andy had gone out to the field late the day before to see if there was any action. He walked to the corner of the woods where two fence rows came together. He hunkered down in the fence row to observe this new area. Andy saw lots of deer sign, and after last shooting time he quickly scouted around and picked a tree stand location for the following day. He would be back with his Thompson/Center Omega .50 caliber muzzleloader .. hoping to smell the black powder as it burned through the barrel for a victory shot!

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Ron Zeiler

You see, Caleb is neither an early riser nor one to sit still for minutes let alone hours. Every year he tells me how he’s ready ’cause he’s older and wiser now. Kolby, his eight year old brother and the youngest of my wife, Kathy, and my four children, thinks hunting is “boring”. I don’t know if Caleb had been allowed to watch or listen to too many campaign ads or what, but he began applying pressure to go along hunting way too early this year, just like the candidates, and he was relentless, just like the candidates.

Little did I know that his campaign promises held about the same amount of “take it to the bank” truth as the politicians’. He must have caught me in a weakened state after a barrage of candidate phone calls and ads when all I could think about was getting to the mountains to shoot at something, because I told him he could go – big mistake to give in too early, as I then heard “how many more days till we go” at least twice a day for months.

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Tom Krans

Here is my 8 point, 140 pound buck that I shot just today. Today is my Dad's 66th birthday and we had planned to spend it hunting together. We walked into the woods at 6:30am, Dad went to his tree stand and I sat in my tree stand for a couple of hours and after having heard only one gun shot, I thought it was going to be a long, slow, cold morning. I was looking in the direction of where I thought the deer might come from and heard the leaves rustling, thinking it was a squirrel, only to discover that this buck was 10 yards away from the tree in which I was sitting. I took aim and fired one off. The shot entered the buck's left shoulder, breaking it's leg and exited out the right leg, breaking that one too. The deer dropped to it's knees (in honor of the the God we serve) and struggled with it's chest to the ground using it's rear legs to propel itself forward until it dropped 50 feet from where I shot it. My kids were so excited when I came home that they drew a memorial photo of my kill with window markers. You can see the deer hanging behind their art work.
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