Nice 8

It snowed last night...about 7 inches so I decided to hit the woods this afternoon. I left work around 1 and went to the tower. I met up with some guy from the cull on the way in and after some chit chat I headed in. I went, as I usually do, as close to the bottom of the apartments as I could. I set up in my tree and just as I did I noticed that someone hung a lock on right next to the apartment. Not sure if they are part of the cull or not...we decided to maintain the 450 feet rule and this clearly is not. Whatever!

Just about 3:00 I noticed movement to my left. Just as I expected, from under the apartments there were three does (and just under that guy's stand). They picked around for a while and left up the hill. At around 4:00 I noticed movement to my left. From the top of the hill I saw a nice buck walking just about where the other guy was. I was actually expecting to hear him shoot any minute..but he didn't. The buck started to walk down the hill then turned and went slightly up and then across. Then he started to come down towards me...my heart was racing. I couldn't believe that I was going to get a shot at this beautiful 8. He was nice and wide and big bodied. He got to about 35-40 yards and decided to turn slightly up hill and out towards the bottom of the apartment (just under that guy's stand). That was all I saw for the rest of the night. When I walked out the guy I met said it was around 30 yards away and he let it walk (WHY?!). There was also another guy there. How is it that I saw only one other guy, one time the entire early bow, regular bow and extended bow...now that it's winter bow, snowy and about 20 degrees (oh, and windy as hell) I see two other guys?