re: Just got back from missouri....I wana puke!!

I let a 5x6 walk in SK my first year hunting there under similar circumstances. I was all of 21 years old at the time. Watched him for 15 minutes and it never really occurred to me that I should shoot him. Maybe it was being star struck, maybe it was just the surreal aspect of being 30 minutes into my first Canadian whitetail hunt. I even got some video footage of him. It was the first day of the season and I had another 7 days to hunt. What do you do? This place killed a 180 class deer pretty much every few days although the average was somewhere around 150. I let him walk thinking he was a 150ish deer. I got ridiculed pretty good when I showed the video at the camp later that evening.

I hunted that same location for the duration of the hunt and never saw him again. I ultimately killed a 125ish 4x4 on the final evening. Still my biggest deer at the time but a far cry from what I let walk.

The enigma buck ended up getting shot 2 weeks later. Gross score was over 170. I ended up sending the video to the hunter that killed him, he got a kick out of that.

It happens...