I got into my back yard stand at 7:00. The deer show up about 7:30 or later as my feeder goes off at 7:00 and they know this. The deer showed up right on time this morning. There where four of them about 40 or more yards from me working the tree line of the yard. Three does or button bucks and a forked spike. They would come up to the edge of the yard, just inside the tree line and out of bow range, sniff and look around and then scurry back into the woods about 10 to thirty yards. they carried this on about 15 minutes or so and finely the forked spike came out but stopped about 40 yards from me. He would sniff and look around and then back into the woods, dance around a little and then back out into the yard but always out of range.
Then I see the big boy, what looked like a 10pt, about 60 yards from me, slowly working his way to the treeline, and I do mean slowly. I had seen him in the yard once befor along with a 9pt at the time. The big boy would work his way to about 45 yards from me and then back deeper into the woods, He would aproach the three does/ buttons and they would scatter befor him like leaves in the wind. I would work my grunt call and the forked spike would step out of the woods, the big boy would come up to about 45 yards and then turn around again. This went on for about 25 minutes. Me, mentaly willing the big boy to step out into range and working the grunt call intermittently, the big boy teasing me, moving closer and then back deeper into the woods. My heart was thumping in my chest like a bass drum being played by a speed freak. The adrenalin was pumping. Finaly he circled around closer to me, stepped out into the yard and stopped at 20 yards quartering to me. I raised by Exomag crossbow to my shoulder, placed the crosshairs of the scope just behind the shoulder blade and squeezed the trigger. All the deer scattered in the blink of an eye at the sound of my "silent" killer. The way the big boy took off I thought I had missed but I knew I had the bow zeroed in and the sight picture was a perfect double lung shot. From my stand I was able to watch the big boy run. He looped about 60 yards into the woods and dropped. I saw him kick a few times and lay still. I climbed out of my stand on shakey legs, flushed with a high of adrenalin. I recoverd my arrow and found it blood smeared over its whole length but no tissue on it. I gave my buck a half hour to bleed out before I went to check on him. In the German tradition of homage to the spirit of the deer and the hunt I broke off a sprig of tree and placed a last bite in the bucks mouth and, not wearing a hat to place it in, a sprig behind my ear.
This was definetly hunting with a capitol H!
My 6th deer in my five years of hunting and my first with a bow. This may be the best deer I take in my lifetime. 165 lb. live weight and 11 points.
Vlad
Excellent Buck 
Congrat's