One time on a cold, steely day in January, I sat in a tree hoping for last-ditch crack at a buck, or at least a shot at one more doe for the freezer. As the gray blanket of dusk settled into the grain field I watched, an 8-point buck snuck out of the timber, nose to the wind, wary after four months of human intrusion in his woods. Satisfied the coast was clear, the survivor took a few more steps and hooked a sapling on the field edge. That’s when the left side of his rack fell off his head. In all my years in the woods, I had run across a few one-antlered bucks, but this was the first [...]

Hunting from one stand on and off for a month last fall, I saw 12 different bucks. Most were small, two were borderline shooters that I passed and one 9-pointer was 150-class. Hot after a doe one day, the giant rolled off the ridge across from me and crashed down into a slough, out of muzzleloader range and moving too fast for a shot. All I could do was sit and gawk his tall tines, brassy like butter knives in the sun. The season came and went, and I never saw him again. I didn’t shoot any buck from the stand, and that is all right. Getting skunked sometimes is part of the game. Just the other day I went [...]