OK. There at two pictures of my ER deer this year. He is a typical 4x4 with a 17 inch spread. G2's are 9.5 inches tall. I know the pictures are not the best but I was solo on this hunt and it was too dark to take a picture that night I shot him with my cell phone. I didn't have a flash camera with me.

Here is the story.

I do not have any private land ER to hunt. There is very little walk in ground in Potter County where I hold the deer tag. So I was scouting some land owned by the School and Public Lands Office. It is public and mostly pretty good hunting ground for the most part. I was out on Thanksgiving Day and watched some does at one piece of ground head into a standing corn field. There was A LOT of standing corn left yet. I drove around the county and saw some more deer and most of those were heading to standing cornfields to bed down. I knew I would have to find some ground along standing corn fields to get my shot. I found the perfect piece of ground and watched that night as 4 does came out of some standing corn right to public ground and were grazing. It was too dark to put a sneak on those does so I waited and came back the next morning early. As I was sitting there the next morning I watched the 4 does come right back the way they came out of the corn. Then all of a sudden another deer came running up to them. I could see he had antlers from 3/4 mile away. Couldn't be all bad! I watched as they all went into the corn and bedded down. Believe me this took lots of restraint not to try to get closer and get a long shot at them. I was in and out of the pickup at least 4 times. I had to be back to watch my children for the day by 9 a.m. as my wife had to work. SO I called and asked…do you want to be late for work or can you get a sitter at 3 p.m. We got the sitter at 3 p.m. that day. I headed out at 3 p.m. and sat in a weed blind about 250 yards back from where they come on to the public land and out of the corn. After 1.5 hour so waiting and watching numerous hawks and owls fly over thinking I was the next meal there the deer come. First two does and then a scrub buck. Then my boy came out. He came out for a bit and went back into the corn. I didn't have a good shot at all the first time he came out. All of a sudden the pheasants (like 400 of them that flew out the night before and I am not exaggerating at all here) started clucking like farm chickens in the grass behind me. When I say close that is an understatement. I could hear the grass move as they walked!!!! It was pretty cool!. When I look back at my deer the buck I want to shoot I standing right there with 13 minutes of legal shoot left (I checked with gps unit). I shot and missed twice before they started to run. I was still hidden and they did not know what was going on or where it was coming from. After one more running shot (which missed) they all came to a complete shot. It proved to be a fatal mistake for my public ground buck. He was laid over at 5:22 p.m. with 8 minutes of season left that day. He isn't the biggest deer out there but my spot and stalk in and hunt proved to work perfectly. Putting in my time and a little bit of a gamble as to if he would be there later that same day paid off.

Now the trouble is to find a taxidermist to do a clean skull mount.

Also stay tuned as I have a muzzle loader tag that is a statewide tag and valid for any deer…..season opens on Dec 13th!