were lucky, however, neither the horse nor the rider were hurt. Later as we were riding through the bush on one of the cut lines, we spotted a nice buck laying down on a slight knoll with two does, but, before I could dismount and get off a shot, he had put too many trees between himself and me. We looked the area over and decided that with all of the deer sign that was there, we would return later on foot.

The following day found us still hunting into the same area, and as we crested the knoll we saw two bucks fighting. One was a yearling and the other about a 130. We watched the two bucks for ten minutes. Bill was about thirty yards behind me and as I turned toward him, he motioned that there was a good buck laying down that I hadn't seen. Finally, I spotted the big buck laying in the willows about one hundred yards away. The way he was laying prevented a shot and I could only see one side of his rack. I liked what I saw. He had five tines on the left side and two of them were close to a foot long. The next five minutes seemed like an hour, but, finally he stood up and gave me a quartering away shot. I could see long tines on the right side now, so the decision was an easy one. With the crack of the 270 he dropped. As Bill and I approached the downed buck the 130 class buck that was sparing with the yearling earlier came running past us chasing the doe that had been laying with the big buck. Now that the big guy was out of the picture, he was going to make the most of it! The two deer passed within ten yards of Bill and I. We yelled and waved our arms but they acted as if we weren't even there. The rut was obviously at its very peak in that area.

We looked my buck over and found that he was a 4X5 that had 75 inches of antler on the left side and sixty-eight inches on the right. He grossed 161 B & C. We had done it!! We had taken three 160 class bucks in three years!

What about next year? Well, who knows? Just maybe we can hit that magic number 170...