After weeks and weeks of sitting, stalking, walking and waiting...I finally fulfilled my manly duty and shot some venison for the family table. This hunting thing is obsessive and I have been of single mindset for the past few weeks...focused on getting a large buck. At one point yesterday morning...after sitting outside freezing my rear end off on the last day of the hunting season with a rifle...I really thought I was going to be shut out. This was quite a depressing thought after seeing so many nice bucks during the archery season and being unable to shoot them at the distance I saw them. I suffered the cold yesterday for three hours before finally calling it quits and then headed into my barn to hunt from the second story window. Not as glamorous as some hunts...be quite a bit warmer than sitting in a tree stand. Consider the second floor of the barn a very large tree stand...with a wood stove for heat...excellent. Shortly after 10 AM three large bucks came parading through the woods about 200 yards in front of me. I yelled out the window and they stopped...I then shot the lead buck...who looked to be the largest of the three. He went 40 yards and then dropped. He is beautiful and I am always sad when I shoot a deer...but I spent a lot of time in the woods this season...and my blog has suffered from all that work. He heads to the butcher today...and don't read the rest of this post if you have a weak stomach...but within an hour of shooting this deer his heart was cooking on the stove...a few bites were had after it had been cooked (very nice) and the rest of it went into a jar to be pickled (will be very nice).