How many have done it...

Greg

Old Mossy Horns
You have more discipline than any of us. the time you are willing to go between kills is remarkable. I have never heard of any other deer hunter so patient.
that leads me to conclude you are in the wrong place. You sure don't have an itchy trigger finger. :)
I am happy with ~60 lbs of meat per year. That can be satisfied with 2 does or a big buck. I just have no desire to shoot a small deer, doe or buck. So it's not necessarily discipline if you don't want to do it. I have two young bucks that I see all the time that I've been letting walk -- a yearling 4x3 and a ~2.5 y.o. 4x4. I hope like heck they make it. It seems that the folks that clean them out leave when it gets really bad around here, only to return when it starts recovering. :( I know I'm in the wrong place, but I don't have the time or the inclination to spend a lot of money to go elsewhere.

There was a large buck sighted in the area that I've been waiting on. Looks like it was in vain. I'm probably going to take a doe or two and see what happens this month as the bucks look for the 2nd round of estrous does and also get hungrier.
 

BiggestSpikeYouEverSeen

Ten Pointer
Contributor
Been hunting for a couple target bucks I’ve had on camera. Been letting bucks and does walk waiting on the big boys you had on camera. Then today a bigger buck that you have never seen come out. He is the biggest 12 pointer you have ever seen up close and personal. You start shaking so bad you forget which end of the gun to grab. Then you get him in your cross hairs and some how you miss. No hair, no blood and you see a small branch freshly cut and a skinned area on the tree in front of him. This is the sickest feeling I have ever felt.

I just hope he will come back probably never get a deer like that in front of me again.

I know this has happened to some of you before. Will he come back to the same area again or is he gone.

I have indeed had the crazy adrenaline rush. It can be nearly impossible to manage sometimes. This is part of the reason I hunt. I have also missed a deer. I haven't been in quite the same situation you are in but I have to believe that if he didn't attribute the disruption to human activity, you'll be fine if he was a resident deer. If he's currently wondering, expanding his range in search of does it's a crap shoot. I've seen more than one mature animal missed cleanly when a second opportunity presented itself later.
 

DRS

Old Mossy Horns
Hate that happened. Makin' memories. Here are mine. Missed the largest racked and bodied buck I have ever seen and had a chance to shoot. Was using my slug gun and he was close to 300 yards tending a doe and going the wrong way. I was hunting some pastureland, it was hilly with hedge rows. I climbed down circled using a hill for cover. I then crawled, on my belly, up a muddy cow path that went through some dog fennel. Nothing but grass about 6" tall between him and me. Heart racing, could hold steady. She would take a step away and them so would he. All the time looking back at me. He knew something was not right. I guessed the range at 190. I knew exactly where to hold for a 175 yard zero and had shot 3" groups out to 240 yards, shooting the Win. Gold Partions running a 385 gr. bullet at 200 fps MV. I have killed deer and a couple respectable bucks at the 170 yard range. If I would have put my 175 yard zero on the top of the shoulder he may have been mine. I could hold steady but my excited brain told me to split the difference. Boom! No, report form the slug hitting I knew immediately I had missed. Both gone. I stand up and he returns to the top of the Hill 300 yards away profiling on the top of the hill silhouetted by, only the sky. I paced it off, approx 180 yards. calculated the shot, shot under him by about 3". Then I realized that at that range the buck had a chest that was over 18" deep. He was a hoss. Never, seen him again. He looked like one of his Canadian counter parts, on the Saskatchewan Outfitters trophy page. It haunts me, but I have to laugh when I know how bad he shock me up. I can't help but get tickled when hunter tell a story of how a big buck, torn a hunter up, so bad he con't think straight. It's part of hunting and why we do it. I know I hunted another one for years in the same area, years earlier, that I always said I if I every see him I hope it's less than 50 yards. Any further, I was sure I wouldn't be able to hit what I was shouting at. No way I could have been calm. Never seen him but once, at 40 yards with a light on him and I know he had to be close to 170". He knocked limbs out of a cedar tree he rubbed, that were over 6 feet high.
 
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