If a relative shoots the buck you've been pining to arrow with your bow, and then saw-wielding, human bush hogs interfere with Plan B, would you hang up your spurs for the season?
Jeff Osborne didn't.
Nothing short of a natural disaster could keep the hunter from Owenton, Ky., indoors during his state's 2013 rifle season.
On the Monday after opening weekend, when most hunters had gone back to work, Jeff headed out before daylight to hunt a spot he'd saved just for rifle season. But about 8:00, just when deer had begun moving through, a crew arrived to cut the brush on a nearby power line.
That afternoon, Jeff went to another farm and walked out a mile-long ridge. He liked the spot so much, he returned there on both Tuesday and Wednesday.
On Wednesday afternoon, after he'd spent the first 10 minutes sending a few text messages to friends, Jeff looked up and saw a monstrous buck.
"The deer had a good-sized body and a massive, wide rack. I got the .300 Win Mag up, found the buck in the scope, shot, and missed. At the boom, it just looked around before going about its business - not what I expected, but that was okay by me," he grinned.
Jeff didn't miss the second time.
"When I walked up to the buck, I first thought I was looking at limbs on the dead cedar next to it. Then I realized what I was seeing were points on the rack, and I nearly went into panic mode," he beamed.
Jeff's 11-pointer is the second-largest, rifle-killed Typical ever recorded from Owen County, Ky. Its composite score is 182 5/8 inches. Dale Weddle measured the rack and will tell Jeff's story in Rack magazine.