Duck or Deer????

So night before last I found myself debating on weather to go try to fill my deer tag or head to the lake for ducks before the weather sours again. A buddy called and wanted to go duck hunting so we headed out to our usual lake. It has rained so much, the water was 3 feet higher then the highest it was last year. We couldnt get to the blind, wound up having to hunt a hole in the flooded timber istead of the outside edge of it. We had some swing through at first light but not much was flying. We got out of the brush and were standing there BSing having a smoke. My buddy stopped me mid-sentence "You hear that?" I said no but before long I could hear the crashing through the knee deep water, twigs and flooded grass. We thought it was other hunters till I saw this massive blacktail buck step out at 25 yards and freeze. It stood there as we talked, took pictures, ran around and such. I ran out to the truck to get my bow and drop off my shotgun. I came back and it still haddnt moved a muscle. Through and through, double lung. went about 60 yards and was down for the count. This is the biggest blacktail buck I have ever seen in person. Old old buck.
This was on a small strip of public land between private fields and county park area along the lake. There is no deer hunting pressure there, noone thinks to try there. Im sure going back next season. He had obveously been sparring with another decent size buck from the rut so theres more there. Bad duck day, good deer day.
 

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We guessed the live weight to be 200 maybe a little more, quite a bit for pacific NW blacktail, esp in our county. The total time that thing stood there while we were talking, running around, taking pics and everything, about 40 min.
 
No ducks, had some mallards swing through right at legal light 7:20 but my buddy didnt think to camo his marshrat boat very well and they flared before he could get a shot, they didnt come into my shooting lane. More flew over but was calm day, they headed to the open lake. About 9 was when the buck came out and that ended our duck day haha. On top of that, walking around in the water I stepped on a nail, didnt punchture me but made my waders leak bad, whole right leg was soaked, haha.
 
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