The land looks old and worn out. The season feels like it has been going a lifetime, but I already ache for the sweetness of another chance for it to be opening day. I want to kill no does now because whatever has made it this far deserves to return again, even though we know that nature will weed some out, just as some of us will not be back for another year at hunting camp, but we are all making plans already for another day, another hunt, another fleeting moment. I yearn to hear the stories of the bucks that were able to slip by everyone else because that gives me one more chance to match wits with him or them. All I want is a chance and every time someone warms my future with the fact that he is still out there, there is another reason to return the next weekend and the next weekend and the next. Isn't that why I hunt?
The wind is too cold this last day of the season to sit comfortably, but you give it a try knowing that what we are looking for is really a year away and I also know that this is where I am supposed to be. You can't finish what you feel like never got started this year, but there is always next year and the next.
Just as you are about to climb down from your blind, you give it one more look and there where there was nothing before he is. There he is, a buck of a lifetime that made it through another hunting season. Man he will be good next year. He might be your biggest ever. He might be the biggest ever killed on the place. And you thought you were hunting a does only season.
What you were hunting for is something to keep you going throughout the rest of the year. What you are hunting for is something that keeps that fire inside you burning with a commitment to do it more, longer, and better next year. What you are hunting for is the the need to return next year. What you are hunting for is hope.

cool

Wow. That got me fired up for one last sit.

I am on my first level 3 MLD
we can hunt until end of Feb for horns
I am ready to get my deer and get it done with!

Move on to some hog hunting, fishing, turkey, etc.. and yearn for opening day next year

MLD here also going to the stand this afternoon.

We hunted this past weekend, going to SHOT show next week, so it ill be the end of the month before we get out again

I have friends that have MLD. I understand the benefits. Just doesn't seem right to me though.

I'm with BenBob. Ready to turn the page. Middle of January has, and always will be it for me.

I got 3 more times I can go out to try for my 5th deer tonight tomorrow am and pm and then on to hogs, yotes, cats, catfish and bass I do not know if I will try but I am thinking about it.