Unfortunately I watched as the doe with buck in tow ran completely across the burn and into the dense forest on the other side.  For the next several min I caught only glipses of the two as they moved around in the trees.  Finally after about 20 min there was no more movement.  Luckily the deer were in a place that I thought I had a good chance of seeing them should they try to leave so I was confident the deer were still below me.  In considering my next move I had to concider three factors: I didn’t know exactly where the deer were, I needed to get closer, and shooting light would be fading.  After giving my situation some thought I finally decided to make  a move to a spot that would close half the distance to the deer.  Once there I would sit and wait and hope the deer passed through one of several small openings in the trees.  I was able to get to the new vantage point fairly quickly and once there got set up and began the agonizing wait.  Over the next half hour I watched as deer fed out onto the burn and back into the trees but saw no sign of the big buck.  Then by chance I was scanning the trees with my scope and located a doe laying in some deep shade where I had last seen the big buck.  I decided this was the doe that the big buck had been chasing because as all the other deer (does and small bucks )milled around this one doe stayed put.  Experience told me due to its behavior I had the right doe.  I quickly focused the camera on the opening next to the doe and waited another 40 minutes.  During this 40 minute period I thought about every possible scenario that could go down and the completely real chance that I would never see the buck again.  With the odds stacked against me, this 40 minute time period also found me literally praying that the buck would show itself again before the light was gone.  Finally, after 1 hour and 20 min,  in what can only be described as an answer to prayer a two point walked over to the sleeping doe and stood her up.  The two point miraculously pushed the doe right through the clearing I was focused on.  I jumped to my feet and stood shaking in anticipation and again checked the focus on the camera.  No sooner did I finish final camera preparations than the big buck stepped around the tree the doe had been laying under and I snapped three photos as he walked through the small clearing.  I snapped many more as he went through several other clearings but due to lighting and position I knew  it would be difficult to see the antlers in the photos and they wouldn’t be wall hangers.  Now that I at least had reference photos I decided to try and sneak on the buck in the thick trees.  I knew this was a long shot to say the least but I had to try.  Just as I suspected, once I entered the trees visibility was terrible.  I was about to give up and be happy with the photos I had when I heard the unmistakable sound of a buck racking a tree.  This was the break I needed.  I quickly put a stalk on the source of the noise.  I used the landscape to hide my movements as I hiked closer to the source of the noise.  Finally I topped over a small rise and peeked down to where I thought the sound had come from.  Sure enough to my surprise there stood the deer just staring at me.  I quickly set up and began snapping pictures.  Persistence paid off and I was able to get some pretty good photos before the buck took 2 steps disappearing back into the thick trees.  The buck has 7 on one side and 11 on the other with huge forks.  He is a magnificent animal and I hope to see him back next year; he has a good chance of doing just that owing to his affinity for the thick trees.

As we were heading down a dirt road to a turn around spot my dad mentioned that perhaps we should go glass of the rim a nearby canyon.  This sounded good to all, and we made our way the short distance to the lip of a deep canyon.

We sat there only a short while when my brother and I, as usually happens, got ants in our pants.  We decided I would walk down the east side of the canyon, my brother would go down the bottom, and my dad would stay and watch from where he was on the rim.  Immediately after splitting up my brother split like a mountain goat down the canyon and I wandered along the lip.  After a short time I lost hope and motivation and made my way back to my dad.  I hadn’t seen a thing so imagine my surprise when my dad excitedly proclaimed, “did you see that buck”?  “No”, I answered, “was it big”? Turns out my dad had seen the buck about a half mile away as it exited the canyon as soon as my brother hit the bottom.  As I pressed him for details on the buck he just kept saying, “all I know is it was big”.

As we sat there discussing and waiting for my brother I saw a doe run over a distant hill, my dad and I pulled our glasses up just in time to see the huge buck pop over the hill right behind the doe.  Still to far away to pick out much detail we watched as the buck chased the doe down into a wooded draw and never re-emerge. After about a half hour the buck never re-emerged so we figured he had bedded down and the hunt for a photo was on.

When my brother returned we explained what was going on and his excitement was evident as him and I set out while my dad stayed behind and stood watch.  What followed was the most painfully slow stalk I have ever been a part of.  The country was wide open around the wooded draw so we had to scoot on our butts for what seemed an eternity.  Finally we were able to locate the buck laying under a tree about 200 yards away.  I slowly raised my binoculars and took a quick peek.  I told my brother it was a huge buck with 4 on one side but the other side was in a tree  branch so I couldn’t tell what it had.  What happened next made my heart stop cold.

As we were sitting there trying to decide how to close the rest of the distance the buck went from a dead sleep to a trot down into the thick of the trees.  This in itself  was enough to cause my heart stop but what really almost killed me was the fact that when the deer trotted off the branch covering the left antler was no branch at all but rather a mess of points and cheaters like I had never seen before.  It was then that I decided it is much less stressful to try and close the gap on a deer that you have an idea is big  rather than a deer that you know is the biggest you have ever seen.  With the weight of the situation weighing on our minds we did the only thing we could do and that was to continue to sneak in the direction the buck disappeared.

A short while later would find us pinned under a juniper tree having a stare down with a doe who was onto us.  We sat frozen, I with my camera out and pointed in the direction of the doe and my brother directly behind me with the video camera trained in the same direction.  There we sat, motionless, as doe after doe and fawn after fawn even a few small bucks filed up to stand next to the doe.  Now what happened next will forever be imprinted in my mind.  While we sat, legs burning from trying to hold our positions, we saw a mess of points appear out of the wash below. Just the tips at first, then a little more and a little more as the monster buck made his way up, head down, to stand with the other deer.   There he was, the buck I had dreamt about, got out of bed at 4:30 in the morning for, spent my life’s savings on my first camera for, walked a million miles for.  A lifetime of dreaming and chasing around in the hills and there he was 30 yards in front of me.

The next few minutes were a blur as the only thing to break the silence was the shutter of my camera as I fired as fast as I possibly could. The experience lasted only a few minutes but the celebration lasted days.  When the buck finally left for good back down the draw he had come up, it began: the whooping, the hollering and the high fives.  My brother and I celebrated like two grown men probably shouldn’t but we had dreamt countless times about the very experience we had just had.  We then ran back to where my dad was and excitedly started showing him the photos on the cameras LCD.  It was a thrill to see my dads face as he was able to see just how big the buck he had found really was.

It was my dad who instilled in me a passion for hunting and more importantly a passion for the outdoors so it was awesome to share this experience with him along with my brother whom I have been dragging out in the hills since he was a youngster.  Now the tables have turned and he drags me around out in the hills but no matter, we share countless fantastic memories, this experience likely being at the top of the list.