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As dawn broke this morning I was at a familiar place: the kids' school bus stop.

Last night after a great dinner at deer camp I pointed the truck down Interstate 81 and headed back to Roanoke.

I had planned to pull out of camp on Thursday but had to move things up a bit.

The main reason was  I found out that two stories I expected to turn in on Thursday were needed today (Wednesday). And it's not like I'm dying to be out there in this wet and windy weather anyway.

Those of you who have seen the current Field and Stream might recall that an article predicted that today would be the best day of the season to kill a big buck. That kind of prediction fits with typical pre-rut and rut patterns in whitetail country.

But, at least where I've been hunting, things seem to be a bit slow still. Yesterday morning I saw two bucks -- a non-shooter eight-point and a spike -- pretty early. Both were just easing through the woods with no urgency whatsoever. I saw three does that were also just taking their time. On my afternoon hunt I saw three mature does that also were just easing along, with nothing following them.

The property has a large (75-acre) field that's been drawing in quite a few deer because there's just not much food in the woods. A couple of my buddies watched the field yesterday evening and saw a bunch of does (as in, a couple dozen). There were a couple yearling bucks out there chasing around and sparring. But the only decent buck spotted wasn't chasing. When you have that many does in one place and little chasing, that tells me it's still early.

But this can turn on quickly and I think the next few days will see the action get increasingly more intense. My hope is to get all my work done today and early tomorrow so I can hunt Thursday afternoon and Friday morning. Then it's back out of the woods so I can go to Northern Virginia to cover the state cross country championships on Saturday, and possibly a high school football playoff game on Friday night.

I guess the good news is I will end up burning only two vacation days this week. The bad news is I still have a bunch of days on the books that I have to use or lose by the end of the year. I guess I'll just try to take them in little chunks here and there.

Of course the hero shots keep rolling in and I will post a few throughout the day today.

Wesley Arthur of Roanoke was hunting on national forest land in Alleghany County on Nov. 7 when he killed this bear with his muzzleloader.

Tim Craighead sent in this shot of his kids, Cory and Danielle, with a couple great muzzleloader bucks.

Thirteen-year-old Danielle killed her nine-pointer on Nov. 5. It was her first deer while hunting solo.

Cory, 9, killed his six-pointer on Nov. 7 while hunting with his dad on the family's property in near Callaway in Franklin County. It was a 100-yard shot.

After downing a couple nice bucks featured previously on this blog, Jason Nicholson got this nice doe during a recent Floyd County hunt.

Nicholson said he had to haul this thing about 200 yards up a ridge just to get to a spot where he could put it on the cart. He said he shot her at 9:30 a.m. and didn't get her out of the woods until after noon. His good hunting buddy said afterward, "Next time see if you can shoot one a little farther out."

Why so much work for a doe? Because hunting is about the whole experience, not just putting one in the freezer or on the wall.

We're getting ready to head out for another day of hunting at our Botetourt County deer camp.

Yesterday was a mixed day. We didn't see a bunch of deer, but saw enough to have some action.

I hunted the point of a ridge from a ladder stand in the morning. At 7:15 a.m. I had a little five-pointer walk right under my stand. I wish I'd had my camera handy. A buck with 3-inch spikes came by a few minutes later. Then it got slow for a while.

Finally, about 10 a.m. I heard deer coming. The three does passed about 70 yards below me and were moving pretty good. That range is a bit iffy with my Thompson/Center Hawken so I just let them roll. Plus they were moving so well I wondered if a buck was on them.

Sure enough, a few minutes later I heard more deer coming. But it turned out to be two more does. They stopped directly below me, about 60 yards away. The big doe knew something was up. I was able to get a good rest so I decided to try the shot. The hit was perfect and she went only about 50 yards. Sixty yards might not sound like much and the Hawken is certainly plenty accurate. But with aging eyes iron sights it's not a gimme and I'm pretty happy with that shot.

Unfortunately, the deer ran another 50 yards down the mountain. The haul back up to the ridge -- she was 90 pounds dressed -- was not fun. Fortunately my buddy Tony Kelly met me up there with the Gator to haul her back to the cabin. My buddy Bobby Hogan killed a good doe, too, and another hunter killed a 15-inch eight-pointer that we suspect was 2 1/2.

Bobby already had one critter in the cooler. He killed his first bear on Saturday. Yesterday he saw another. Two of the other guys saw one, too. They think they all saw the same bear. This place is crawling with bears, which have really been working on the corn on the adjacent farm. They have been off limits for years but the landowner gave us the green light this season because of all the damage they're doing at the neighbors. I suspect those guys would have been getting kill permits if we didn't take at least a couple out.

Wet weather is on the way. Maybe the approaching front will have the deer moving this a.m. I plan to put in a few hours then come back and post a bunch more of the trophy shots that have come in the past couple of days. Thank goodness our camp computer tech support guy, James Quarles, was able to get this Verizon Mi-Fi thing (provided by the paper) going so I have wireless access. Oh, the joys of modern deer camp.

Nine-year-old Tanner Joyce at Axton was hunting his dad, Darrell, on Saturday when he killed his first deer, dropping this great doe with a muzzleloader.

They were using a doe decoy and it pulled this one in to 50 yards, and Tanner did his job at that point.

Todd Hostetter of Buena Vista is a heck of a photographer, and shoots most of his bucks with his camera. But he's a hunter, too, and killed this great 10-pointer last week with his muzzleloader.

Jimmy Pedigo was bowhunting on private land near Purgatory Mountain on Oct. 22 when he scored on his first bow-killed bear.

Last week he killed this nice buck with his muzzleloader.

Curtis Tyree nailed this stud on Tuesday while hunting in Floyd County.

It's a cell phone shot so the size leaves something to be desired. But it's still pretty easy to tell that this is a super buck.

Chris Straub of Cloverdale killed this great nine-pointer on Monday while hunting on private land (in Botetourt County) with his uncle, James Firebaugh.

This is Straub's first buck and his uncle reported that it came after his nephew endured a frustrating season last year.