Steve sent this picture with the message: Mike, I know how you like drop tines… A friend of Steve’s killed the farmland deer in Michigan, northern Macomb County, about 20 years ago.

Could it be an omen that the dream buck shows up here on Big Deer after all these years?

The obsession to shoot a drop took me years ago, decades ago, though I am not sure when or even why. It is not because I went out one day and saw a dropper skulking through the woods and thought: That is the most awesome thing I have ever seen; I won’t be complete until I shoot one. No, after many years of serious whitetail hunting in 30 states and 4 Canadian provinces I have seen exactly one, just for a minute and too far for a shot, and then he was gone.

Ever since, my desire to kill a dropper has so consumed me that it defines who I am as a deer hunter.

As I blog this I am well into planning my 2013 hunt schedule for Big Deer TV.  Texas, Virginia, Oklahoma, Saskatchewan, maybe Kansas and Indiana… There are drop tines walking around those places. Will this be the year? Can I handle it and shoot an arrow or bullet straight if I do see one of the mythical beasts?

I try not to think about it too much, though it is always there in my heart, mind and soul. I admit to getting more anxious as the seasons fly by. I have hunted more years than I have left on this rock. I am on the downside of the drop-tine obsession.

Still, I hunt as hard as ever, and I hope.