Thread: The one that got away...

I'm sure everyone has a story or two with this tag line. So I was just wanting to start a thread to alleviate my pain at the moment.
What's your "One that got away" story?

I'll kick things off with my weekend.


Have an area of private that I have been hunting for a couple of years now and although I've known there were stags there, big stags at that, I haven't been able to get on to them. My brother went spotlighting last week and saw a nice young 12 pointer feeding in a nearby crop and told me the next day that it'd be a good one to have a go at with the bow.
So yesterday I took the bow and thought I'd give it a whack.
The wind was a northerly so I spent about 20 minutes skirting around the bush to come from the south. I zig zagged through the bush in the area where they have always lived and after about 2 hours of patient stalking without one footprint or one piece of shit and coming into an area they have never stayed in I un-nocked my arrow, a little bemused.
I kept walking along the game trail to where it branched into a Y. I ummed and ahhed and eventually decided to go left, took a few steps and thought "fuck it, I'll go right". I walked on a another 30 seconds maybe and paused staring at the ground wondering "how the fuck is there not one track, not even an old one". I looked up and there 50 m in front of me is the biggest fucking stag I have ever seen. A monstrously wide and heavy 12 pointer, about 35"+ long main beams, a small bodied, very skinny and old looking guy standing completely broadside. Well having no gun and no nocked arrow I may have well a tried to throw a stone at the bugger to kill him. I slowly dropped and tried to nock an arrow as quick as possible but he took off.
I am only a mere man, I stood there for a moment not sure whether to be angry at myself for not thinking a bigger stag was in there, angry for taking the fucking bow instead of the rifle, or whether I was going to cry. As stupid as it sounds, my passion became the obsession, it was one of those really powerful moments in my life that made me question what I do and why I hunt. I got up at 5:30 yesterday morning with 4 hours sleep and was rooted all day but I was still staring at the ceiling last night at 3am picturing that stag. I haven't put pen to paper today at work because he's still in my head and the sick feeling in my stomach just won't go away.

I am as gutted as I've ever been right now but there is one positive I can cling to. To know that I feel this way and that I'm attached to hunting so much, as stupid as it sounds, makes me feel like I have a purpose. He may be the "one that got away" but I'm a hunter, and I'm going to get him....