Hunted Saturday morning/evening and this morning, Saw LOTS of deer. Every doe/group of doe I saw was followed shortly by at least one young buck. Saw two bucks chasing does around on the neighboring place. One was a nice main-frame 8, the other was also a main 8 but much larger. Then had five doe come out of the woods on my place. They came out of the treeline (on a power line ROW) about 350 yards out and worked their way to right in front of my stand. A little "crab-claw" spike was the first buck to harass them and he gave 'em hell. That was pretty cool to watch. I've never seen bucks chasing does at so close a range before and wish I'd thought to pull my phone and record it. I'm serious, they were about 15 yards from me. "Crab Cake", as I've named him, darted off suddenly, so I kept watching the does, hoping the bucks I'd seen earlier would find them. Sure enough, the smaller one shows up to check out the does. He came to within 15 yards of my stand so I got a good look at him. He had the height and width in horns, but thin. The other that I'd seen with him had some nice depth to him and was likely a year older, so I waited. The older guy never showed up. They all left about 9:30 so I gave it until 11:00 before heading in for cold breakfast. I think the old boy I was after was hanging out in the wings watching the goings on and may make himself visible once the doe actually come into season. I warned everyone at camp about Crab Cake. He looks just like a yearling spike from front or back, but if he turns his head you can see both antlers are clearly forked. He has a perfect crabclaw at the end of both spikes.

edited to add: I might be be kicking myself in late December for not shooting the one I saw...or doing the happy dance for waiting for the one I wanted. It's the chance we take sometimes in AR counties.

Sounds like a great weekend!

I'm glad some one had a great weekend!

Woulda' been better if the older one had made the dance, and I'm worried about that double crab claw not-really-a-spike-I-just-look-like-one. Afraid someone's gonna' get in a hurry and pop him. (AR county, little forkhorns no bueno) I guess a crab-claw is considered a "branched antler?" And they're very obvious from a side-view.

It seems to me that AR counties just perpetuate the illegal-sized gene pool since many never make it beyond the minimum reqmnts and therefore never get shot and go on breeding until they die...furthering the illegal gene pool?

Zactly what we think too. We would love to take out a couple of bucks we have seen the past two years due to their poor composition and deformation, but the AR says they have immunity so we just have to pray they aren't getting lucky.

Same with us. We spent 15 years thinning the basket racks and were just starting to see some nice mature bucks when they threw AR's on us. Now the little dinks have a free pass to the gene pool.