Stuart McCoy sent in this awesome shot. It comes with an even more awesome story, which starts now:

“Stuart McCoy here, long time blog follower, random commentor and rare trophy shot submitter……But I couldn’t keep myself from sending this guy in.

A lot of people hunt alone.  I’ve done it, there’s nothing wrong with it, but hunting with a buddy can certainly make things easier.  My hunting buddy is Jim Brackman.  We’ve been hunting together for 14 years.  We hunt on Jim’s property in the west end of Alleghany County.  The first couple of years, I would make the drive from Millboro to the property each day.  We then started camping up on the property in a tent, and have advanced to a modest, but comfortable hunting camp that we built.  We have had a lot a great years deer wise, we’ve also had a lot of lean years, but we have always stuck together.  We’re not big time hard core hunters on the stand from daylight to dark, we are a couple of guys who enjoy hunting, but a week or more staying on the mountain, at the camp, away from work, is our true vacation.

On Wednesday, November 21st, Jim was hunting out of a tree stand in an area we call the “New Place”.  At about 4:15 I flinched when I heard Jim’s shot.  Shortly after, I got a jumbled text message that I deciphered out to mean that Jim was needing some help.  I packed up my things and headed that way.  That’s the way Jim & I work.  If one of us gets a deer and needs a hand, the other guy leaves his stand & helps him out.  Our hunting season is a genuine two man operation.

When I got to the area Jim was hunting in, I saw him walking around on a skid road along the side of a ridge.  I’ve never known Jim to get excited over a buck, but he was a wreck.  “Look for blood……it’s a big one” was all that he said.  We couldn’t find any……..not a drop.  The worst part was that the skid road the deer was on ran along a VERY steep ridge, like the kind of steep you want no part of.  I handed Jim my fanny pack & started off down in to the hollow.  He was going back to get the UTV and drive it down the mountain to see if he could get to another skid road below us.  I zigged & zagged my way down the ridge, not having any idea of which way the deer may have gone, how mobile he was, or in the back of my mind, if it was even hit……Then I heard the brush crashing below me.  I eased up and looked over the ridge down below me, I couldn’t see a deer, then I saw what I thought was a tree branch start to move.  I realized what I was looking at…….and then it hit me.  I was in the same shape that Jim was in when I first got to him on the skid road.  I was shook up and I mean shook up.  I composed myself long enough to make a good shot on the animal.

For the next several minutes, I would have loved to have had someone recording our radio conversation.  I should probably change the word conversation to “chatter.”  I have no idea what he was saying to me because I would start cutting him off before he finished…..same way with me to him.  I finished dragging the deer down to the next skid road, I could hear the UTV up above me, Jim was able to get in close enough to winch this guy up to him.

It’s been nothing but smiles around the Hokie Haven Hunt Club since Wednesday.  We both have our own story about this buck, a snap shot in time, that neither one of us is likely to forget anytime soon.

Now for the particulars.  The buck is an 11 point.  Inside spread was 18.5″, one of the G3′s was 10.5″……just a beauty of a buck.  I would have loved to have known what he weighed in at.  One other note, we had no pictures of this buck on game cam.

Take care and again, thanks for the blog.”

So, I wonder who gets to put the mount up in his house!?