I apologize in advance for the length of this post but it was one of my top three hunts of all time!! My youngest got his first buck on Sunday (the other two top hunts were my two older kids firsts). Background is that he and I have been hitting the woods really hard trying to get his first buck. We have hunted nearly every opportunity we have had since Christmas hoping we could catch one slipping up before everyone hit the woods to hunt the rut and before they were running their butts off chasing does (in my mind - less running = better shot for my 11 year old). Well after seeing a bunch of does and spikes we had both grown a little frustrated with the deer hunting but we always came home with funny stories from our adventures and honestly sometimes we laughed so hard in the stand that we probably spooked some deer we never saw. This brings us to this past weekend.....we hunted Friday afternoon, Saturday morning and evening with the same results so i decided that on Sunday we would go later and hunt mid day. Woke up Sunday morning and had all but decided we would take the day off until a very good buddy of mine called me at 9:30 and asked were we hunting today? I told him that we had decided to take the day off. His response was "you need to get him up here and in a stand now". He explained that he had seen 2 different 8's chasing and thought there was a good chance we might get lucky. So of course we loaded up in a hurry and were sitting down at 10:01. Again we sat for two long hours with nothing but birds and a little wind. As he was getting restless and ready to head out i spotted two deer crossing a lane in some pines behind us. Not sure if one was a buck but that gave us a little hope. Few minutes later a little spike eased out and walked through the lane we were watching. 10 minutes later we see some sort of racked buck cutting does in the pines to our right. Now he is ready to sit till dark!! Luckily about 20/30 minutes later i spot a nice 8 walking down a row of pines straight for us. Of course its out the window he is sitting by so we have to rearrange to get his gun out the window and get him a chance at a shot. At about 100 yards he starts veering to his right and doesn't present a good shot but hot dang he has read the script!! We get back in our original positions while It takes him what seems like forever to cover the hundred yards to make it to the lane we are facing - we can see his rack shining the whole way. My son gets his gun shouldered and ready. I tell him to let me know when he has a good shot and i will stop him. Well.......the deer walks right out in front of us at 80 yards and almost gets across the narrow lane. When i stop him i hear "o crap", he shuffles a bit and finally i hear the gun go off. (When i stopped the deer he was not on his shoulder yet so he had to get there in a hurry) I watch the deer jump, hit his chest, and bulldoze through the pines with his left front leg flopping!!!! High fives and hugs are flying in the shooting house as the rain starts. I'm very confident in the shot and that he was down within 40/50 yards but we gave him about 10 minutes (only 10 because of rain) and then go look for blood. 0 blood found in plot or in pine straw exiting plot??? So i start scanning the plot and the side where he left and i find where his chest hit leaving the plot - in my excitement i didn't properly mark where he was standing at the shot - he was 25 yards further than i first thought. Anyway after teaching him the lesson of me screwing that up - we followed a very light blood trail and skid marks for 40 yards. We smelled his stinking butt before we saw him. More high fives and hugs!! Again Thank the Lord for the opportunities and thanks to a great friend - without that call we would have surely stayed at home. And it turns out that the deer he killed wasn't one of the deer my buddy had seen chasing earlier.