Busted!

This is one of my favorite photos I have ever taken.  I watched this buck bed down from a ridge top about 1000 yards away.  I then proceeded to hike about 3 miles around the spot were he was bedded in order to have some concealment as I put a sneak on.  After about 1 hr I had made the hike around and had closed most of the distance to the draw the buck was bedded in.  I had my shoes off and was moving at an incredibly slow deliberate pace, so imagine my surprise when I saw about 6 doe and a couple small bucks spook out of the draw about 75 yards ahead of me.

It was at this point that I made a rookie mistake and I knew better.  I just figured that all the deer had spooked and that the big buck had just taken a different exit route so I hadn’t seen him leave.  Assuming this was the case I abandoned my stalk and just started walking up to where I had seen the buck bed down.  When I was about 30 yards from the spot I saw the doe in the photo above stand up.  I immediately pulled up my camera and focused on her.  The doe and I stood locked on each other for what seemed an eternity but was likely a minute or so when suddenly through the view finder I saw the antlers of the buck appear.  I couldn’t believe my eyes and started snapping.  I only got 3 photos shot before the two deer bounded off.  Now, I didn’t have the camera on a tripod and the whole thing happened so quickly that I was very unsure of what the photo quality would be.  Nervously I reviewed the photos and was overjoyed as I saw that one of the 3 had indeed turned out.  This was one of the few times I was out without my brother so I tucked my camera away and headed for town to show him what I had found.

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