This is my buck from last fall. I had a friend that gave me some areas to check out, since he had spent a lot of time scouting, and had tagged a smaller, but still nice 4x4 buck in the same area during the early muzzleloader season. I hiked several miles in to get at this guy. I had just about given up, and was picking which of three ridges to hike back up, when he broke cover out of the draw and scrub directly in front of me... hightailing it for the next county. All I saw was a WIDE rack, and a big white butt going away from me. I sat down, slung up, popped the caps on the scope and put a single 180gr Accubond handload through his boiler room, all in the space of scant seconds after I saw him break cover. Distance was only about 90-100 yards across the draw.
I didn't have time to get buck fever, or debate if I wanted to shoot him or not. I had been holding out the last several years for a bigger buck, and passed on a lot of small ones. I didn't even know exactly how many points he had, or how big he really was until I walked up to him on the ground. Right at 30" wide... not a high number score, with the shallower forks (160-170?), but I'll probably never shoot another deer this big in my life. I could not drag him uphill after field dressing, so I ended up quartering him. He had to have been 200 lbs+ on the hoof.
Finances, work, not drawing tags, and other considerations have kept me from big game hunting this year. It's a bummer... so I may have to make due with chasing chuckars in the desert, or maybe find a field to walk for pheasants.