It was August 2, 2008 when I first located this deer on the property I hunt in CT. A big beautiful, perfectly symmetrical 8 pointer - the largest on the property this year. I had placed my trail camera along the creek bottom because I found a trail in the snow alongside it the previous winter. Knowing the buck existed, I was determined to find his bedding area.

About a week later I had the camera in a new location watching a break in a stone wall leading up from a thick swamp I thought the deer might be bedding in or near. A doe set the camera off, but he was there in the background, antlers high above his head.

After a few hunts I left this area as to not over hunt it. I would return later in the season. During September and October I hunted two other sections of the property and filled two buck tags on my biggest bucks to date. I spent November and December hunting in NY and returned to CT in January with my 2009 tags.

I set up a camera over some corn (baiting is legal in Zone 11 in Connecticut) and hoped to lure the buck out of his hiding area during shooting hours. A few days earlier I had taken a doe from this exact spot and watched two bucks off in the distance with both antlers. In this picture, you can see the buck in the center has already lost his antlers.

I had 150 pictures in 4 days - the big buck showed up and even had a friend, but their antlers were no longer around. The bucks had shed their antlers over the last few days and all I could do was hope they would make it though the winter.

For more pictures visit the NYbowhunter.com Forum.