It was late October by the time Tim received permission to hunt on the farm, so he made one quick scouting trip and went hunting the next day.

"I found a place I thought would be good and I hunted there three days," Tim said. "The second day, three guys come out on horseback and rode right under my tree stand. I never saw a deer."

Tim got called back to work at General Motors in Dayton and didn't get to hunt again until Nov. 9.

"That Friday, I got home at 4 p.m.," Tim continued. "I grabbed my stuff and went over to the farm. When I got there, somebody else was parked where I usually park and they were obviously hunting, so I didn't go in there."

Tim then drove around to the other side of the farm and parked in an open pasture on top of a hill.

"I went to a place I had never hunted before," he said. "It was windy that afternoon, with gusts blowing in all directions, and it was late. So I left my climber in the truck and went in on foot. I was hunting near a thick, dried-up creek bottom grown up in saplings and honeysuckle with some old 4-wheeler trails going through it."

Tim hiked about 150 yards into the thicket, following one of the old trails. He walked up a steep hillside and found a spot up the hill behind a big tree where he sat down.

"I only had maybe an hour and a half of daylight by the time I got there," Tim said. "I had never hunted that area before, it was windy and I didn't have a lot of confidence, but it was the peak of the rut, so I figured I should be out there."

Tim hadn't been in his spot for 15 minutes when he heard crashing about 60 yards away across a creek.

"Two deer came out -- a buck chasing a doe -- but by the time I grabbed my crossbow, all I could see was two brown animals running up the hill toward the pasture. I thought they might double back, so I just sat there. Shortly after that, another buck came down the same trail with his nose to the ground, following the doe. Twenty minutes later, a third buck came along, tracking the same doe."

Having just seen three bucks, Tim tried grunting and rattling, but to no avail. "About 30 minutes before dark, I eased down to the 4-wheeler trail and started walking back toward the truck in the direction the deer had gone," Tim said. "When I got to within 10 yards of the pasture, I heard crashing in the brush.

Suddenly, all the deer ran out into the field. One pretty good buck circled out into the field looking back toward me, blowing and stamping his feet."

While Tim was watching that buck, another, larger buck sneaked up along the field edge and started working a scrape.

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