Fumbling nervously in the darkness for one of his distinctive white-fletched arrows, Mike Beatty had made one of the toughest decisions of his life: to temporarily abandon the search for the monstrous whitetail he'd shot at dusk. Still not convinced that he'd chosen correctly, the Ohio bowhunter nocked the projectile on the barbed wire fence to mark where he should resume the next morning. He then went home.
Several hours later, as rain began pounding the roof of his home in nearby Xenia, Ohio, Beatty began second-guessing his choice. The rain could wash away the blood trail that he had been following!
Unable to sleep, Beatty was on the couch, wide-eyed but only half-watching ESPN reruns. He was really waiting for dawn.
"I got nauseous (just thinking about it)," he admitted. "I thought I was going to lose it."
The previous evening, Nov. 8, had started out in typical fashion. Beatty left work at 3:30 and drove under drizzly skies ...