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Richard Hurt shot this great eight-pointer on Oct. 6 while hunting in Bedford County.What a great bow buck.

The arrival of this cool front should help the hunting. Things can get quiet for seeing good bucks in mid-October, but it won't be long before they really start moving.

I hope to get out for a quick hunt Saturday morning. I plan to go to one of my best stands, which I haven't yet hunted. The past two years I've killed a deer (doe) with a bow the first time I've hunted it so it's asking a lot to do it three years in a row. But why not?

There are a few things I've come to count on this time of year.

The Cubs will no longer be playing.

Check.

A heat wave will hit in early to mid-October.

Check.

Allen "Moe" Lazenby will send me a picture of a nice buck.

Check.

OK. This isn't a buck. It's a black bear. But it weighed 312 pounds, according to Moe, who said he had hunted every day of the season until Wednesday. So even though Moe also sent me a picture of a nice buck killed at the same spot, this one is going up first.

Details on the kill? About as many as you'd expect: Roanoke County on the evening of Oct. 14. I probably wouldn't be talking much about a spot like that, either!

I just got a follow-up e-mail from Moe and he said this is the third year in a row he's killed a bear. He said he got a 280-pounder with a rifle, a 500-pounder last year with a muzzleloader, and now this one. Considering that there are about 300,000 big game hunters in Virginia and the annual bear kill is only about 1,500 a year, you don't have to be a statistics whiz to know just what a rare accomplishment that is.

The streak will end now, as Moe says he's done with bears unless it's in self-defense.

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Can you imagine this big bull bugling its head off 11 yards away?

Somehow, Nick Norman managed to stay calm enough to put a good bow shot on this big boy during a recent trip out to Colorado's Gunnison National Forest.

Norman, who lives in Blacksburg, was hunting with his dad, head DGIF turkey biologist Gary Norman and the DGIF's forest wildlife biologist supervisor, Dave Steffen.

Gary Norman said that after this bull went down another bull was bugling like crazy in the area. But knowing that taking care of one elk was going to be enough of a chore they passed on the second bull and got this one out of the woods. As it turned out they went back for the next three days and that elk wouldn't make a sound.

Sonny Hodges of Hardy just sent in this shot of his a great 10-pointer he killed Oct. 10 on Bent Mountain.

Hodges says this is his best bow buck ever, but it's not his first nice buck. In fact, he killed a monster last year, too. When you can kill two bucks like this in back to back seasons, it's something special.

I was reading a story last night about how the hunting during a full moon in October is tough, especially when it's warm. Well, we've got a full moon and near record high temperatures. But I've got a rare weekday late afternoon/evening open today so I might just go out and give it a try anyway. Of course, like most articles, this one was all about hunting "trophy" bucks. I could care less about that right now. I would be happy to have a good doe get into bow range.

Keep the deer pictures and hunting reports coming.

Here's the opening line from a news release I just saw from Lone Star Outdoor News:

"DALLAS-Archery hunters had mixed reports from the Texas opener, with drier areas having deer coming to the feeders, but hunters in areas receiving heavy summer rains saw an abundance of acorns and new growth keeping the deer away."

I don't know if I've ever seen a more concise example of how accepted deer hunting methods vary from state to state.

I can just see these guys sitting by their feeders, cursing the fact that deer are actually concentrating on natural food sources. "You mean I've got to go out and actually figure out where the deer are? Instead of just waiting for them to answer the dinner bell?"

I've had defenders of hunting over bait tell me it's not a sure thing, and I guess this supports that assertion.

After a couple of close encounters with good bucks the first few days of the season, my buddy Freddy McGuire killed this nice eight-pointer Tuesday evening.

As a guy who hunts in Franklin and Bedford counties, Freddy will now have to put his doe-hunting skills to work because those are earn-a-buck counties and you have to tag an antlerless deer before you can shoot a second buck. I was kidding Freddy about being in a tough spot and he replied that he's seen way more bucks so far than does. Rough problem to have, huh?

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Nino Ripepi of Blacksburg just got back from a great hunt out in New Mexico, where he killed this great mule deer.

Now, let's see if he can fool a big whitetail out here...

Virginia's early archery season got started on Saturday, and it got started well for Dave Boush of Roanoke. Boush was hunting the Bent Mountain area when he killed this nice 10-pointer about 8:30 a.m.

I was out Saturday morning with a couple of conservation police officers from the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. They were checking on some baited stands. All of the stands were empty, as it turned out.

I had another commitment on Saturday evening, then had to work early this morning. So no hunting for me yet. I hope to get out at some point this week but am not sure when.

In recent scouting of a couple of my spots I've found spotty acorn crops. That could actually pay off because at least then if you find the productive oak trees you have a better chance of seeing deer.

Over the weekend I did take a quick scouting trip to a spot I hadn't hunted in a few years. I'd actually left a stand in there because it was locked to the tree and I had long ago lost the key to the cable lock. Well, turns out it didn't matter. Someone had cut the cable and taken the stand. That's the first stand I've had stolen (knock on wood). At least it wasn't an expensive one.

If you have pictures of deer, send them my way and I'll post as many as I can.

One of the final guys to the leave the 68th annual Virginia Big Game Contest was James Taylor, who was busy at the end of the show having his photo taken and accepting congratulations for his Culpepper County 18-pointer that was the highest scoring deer at the show.

Afterwards Taylor loaded his buck in the passenger seat of his compact truck and got ready to drive home.

"It gets some attention," he said of his traveling partner. "A lot of people slow down and look."