One weekend many years ago, my son and I went to a power line to hunt for the evening. After about an hour he had to pee. I told him to go s little ways back the way we came in as I have never seen a deer come from that direction. As soon as he went, I heard a commotion and he came running back to me wide eyed. He said he jumped a big buck, laying right beside the trail we used coming in and it was the biggest buck he had ever seen.
Fast forward 1 week....
I worked off on Friday morning at 5;30 and drove straight to the same power line. I chose a spot on the side of a hill where I could see 2 ridges over on the power line. After sitting all day and not seeing a single deer, I was starting to think I was jinxed.
About 3:30 that afternoon, 2 squirrels started playing beside me and I was grateful for the action. At 4pm, I thought one of them was back. At 4:10, I heard it again but closer. I looked up the hill, over my right shoulder and there, not 25 yards away, stood the biggest whitetail buck I have ever seen while actively hunting. He was a mainframe 10 point and well outside his ears. We had a stare down because, being a right handed shooter, my rifle was in my lap pointing the wrong direction.
After a brief stare down, he put his head down and started swinging it back and forth as they do when they see something but aren't quite sure what it might be. Whatever he decided that I was, he didn't like it in his area and here he came, straight at me, at a full run. With only seconds to decide what to do, I swept my rifle around, single handedly, and yanked the trigger. I guess that a 7mag going boom in his face, at about 10 feet, was more than he could take as he turned and went back into the woods from which he had come.
I sat there for an hour, until it was completely dark, and smoked 9 cigarettes. As I did, I had a disturbing thought. That deer had come looking for me. Let me explain....
Since I had been there all day, I had gone the way I least expected deer to come from to pee 3 times. No one, not even God himself, will ever convince me that he didn't smell where I had peed and come looking for me. It must have made him mad and he was seeking vengeance.
Lesson learned. I have, ever since, paid a lot more attention to random noises in the woods.
It turned out Iād foolishly left my rifle in the truck overnight, and the drastic shift from cold to warm had turned it into a mist machine. I tried to wipe it off, but by the time I finally got a clear view, that bull was already long gone.
