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I have spent most of the last half of December hunting whitetail with my friends Dave and Anthony. The hunt started on the 13th, but due to work, weather and my wife having surgery I did not get too involved until just before Christmas. We were fortunate enough to be able to hunt every day after Christmas and we even hunted the morning of Christmas day. On Monday the 30th we were down to the wire and both hunters had lowered their expectations. Anthony was willing to shoot just about anything in order to fill his tag and Dave was willing to look at anything around the 90 to 100 inch mark. I took Anthony and his friend Darrell up one ridge and Dave went up another. About 45 minutes in we spotted a small buck working his way towards some does. While Anthony and Darrell tried to track him I was setting up my custom 300 Win Mag for a long shot. After looking at the situation with the deer at 680 yards and heading over a hill we would not be able to see, we decided to relocate so that we could cut some of the distance off and see the shady side of the hill that he was heading towards....30 minutes later we were setting up on him again from a different hilltop. He did us the favor of standing out in the open on a rige top for 15 minutes and that was all we needed. Anthony was able to drop him with one shot at 621 yards. At this point Anthony and Darrell had work to do and were done hunting. I guided them to the deer and went to work looking for a deer for Dave. About 1 hour later Dave was watching some deer that I was not able to see. He said one of the bucks he would be happy with if he could get a shot, but he wanted help with the shot and watching the deer. It took me about an hour to get to Dave because I had to cross the canyon that was between us. When I arrived where Dave was, sweating and out of breath, he tells me the deer has vanished in the bottom of the canyon in the thick timber and scrub and he has not seen him since. We glassed the area for a couple of hours working on our sun tans in the middle of the day and never did see the buck that he had seen earlier. After a brief intermission for a nap, we both started moving around to look at other areas while still keeping an eye out for the deer in the spot where he had disappeared. I saw a doe grazing up a hill on the far side of the canyon and decided to keep an eye on her. For practice I ranged her and set up my rifle for another long shot just in case a good one showed up. After setting up the rifle for a shot I went back to glassing. In less than 5 minutes I spotted a buck slinking in from the right about 200 yards from her. I relocated the rifle while Dave ranged him. He was at 580 yards. Dave took the shot and the deer rolled. We thought it was over but a short time later the deer got up and walked behind a tree. After a little while he decided he wanted to follow the doe in spite of being hit and Dave was able to put a finishing shot in him. We looked at the sun going down over the ridge and made the difficult decision to leave him overnight and hope the critters didn’t get to him. The next morning we went back with all 4 of us and I was able to talk Dave, Anthony and Darrell right to the deer. Fortunately he was un-touched and we were able to recover all of him. I gross scored this buck at 97 inches, so Dave got to come away with what he was looking for on his second succesful Coues Deer hunt