Deciding to pass on the Veterans Day festivities, I got up early on Wednesday the eleventh and was getting ready to go to Georgetown and play softball when I walked to the picture window in our kitchen and looked out over the cut, hay field.

To my surprise, in the before sun up, haze, there walking down the fence row, obviously looking for a doe, was a nice eight point buck! He was a young one, three and a half years old with horns well outside his ears and a tall rack. Not much mass, but a real pretty animal!

The deer continued on his way and against the heavy brush two hundred yards across the field, I saw movement and a closer look with the binocs, proved it to be a big, buck, much larger than the “fence walker”. The big boy sensed I was looking at him and broke into a trot, never giving me a look at the size of his rack, only it looked to be half again as tall and much heavier that the first one.

Both my camera and rifle were in our old, ranch house. Such is life! Someone said, “The best blind is your back porch!”

Getting home Wednesday afternoon in time for the PM hunt, with a pulled ham string, thanks to softball, I hurried out to an unused blind on the backside of my property that overlooked a well used deer trail. Taking along a freezer pack, I sat that under my pulled “hammy” for the two hours of my hunt.

Just before dusk, along came a most unusual deer, only six points, but with tall horns that were at least six inches outside his ear. Needing to be in Killeen at 8:30 PM to pick Layla up at the airport, she was returning from a softball executives meeting, I passed on the buck and couldn’t even get my camera up for a “shot”.

All I got was a cold leg!