How do you break the bittersweet news to the father/son team you share the lease with?

parade it through camp pointing and laughing the whole time

ummm... good luck. they should be happy for you, but it's not always easy to hear that someone shot a buck that you have been after...

no easy way however the father should be able to reinforce the ethics of hunting with other people as well as friends to his son (if he is a younger) that everybody has their day for some it takes years some it does not. I would hope you get a congrats on the harvest. sounds eaiser than it is if other hunters do not appreciate that all hunter will have their day. yours was when you harvested this prize buck. either way be proud.

With a nice picture.

heres what i would do. if the guy has game cams set up drag your deer to one of his cams. This is where it get interesting because most game cameras take a 3 shot blast. The hard part is to make sure you get three good pics of the deer with you holding him. When the guy comes back to the lease tell him you killed a good deer and you used his deer cam since you forgot your camera. What would be even better would be if you killed it in his feeder pen that way you dont have to drag it all the way over there.

I've been hunting for about 20 years and i have been they guy that hunts hard and the one or two weekends a year thati dont go to the lease is the weekend that the big daddy of the year geshot and not by me. you just tell them and they should be happy that he was taken by someone they know and not hit on the road or poached

It is what it is, there is nothing worng with what you did and no one else should have a problem with it either. And if some one does have a problem with it, then O-well. You killed a nice deer and have no reason to be anything but proud.

If they get upset then there no friend or buddy. If someone on my lease shoots a good one I am happy for them. If they shot it under my feeder then we have a problem.