It was the evening of opening day rifle Nov. 15th 2012. My girlfriend Holly Snodgrass and I headed to the top of a hill on a long 75ft wide clearing between two hardwood thickets. I felt this would be a good spot from finding some rubs and scrapes in the middle of the thickets the day before. I thought maybe something might pass through this clearing. We plopped down around 3pm on 5 gallon buckets and we were having a conversation about how she and my good friend Richard Groves thought it was a bad spot to sit right out in the open. Little did I know, we were sitting 100 yards from an active run at the bottom of the hill. Around 4pm a 4 point popped out at 50 yards in front of us. I put him in my cross hairs for about 30 seconds before I decided to pass on him and as I lowered my rifle, he scattered back into the woods. Holly and I continued to converse and she kept telling me to be quiet. Things started to heat up around 5pm, approximately 175 yards out a doe in heat was on her way out into the open. I raised my rifle once again and put her in my cross hairs. I said to Holly, “I bet a buck is following her”. Thirty seconds later, I took aim behind her at what I thought was 6 point at the moment. It was starting to get dark and hard to focus, both deer were blending into the back ground very well. I stabilized my shot with my left elbow on my left knee holding my rifle free handed and centered my cross hairs to the best of my ability. I slowly began to squeeze the trigger and BANG! went my Howa 30-06, the smoke cleared and Holly witnessing with her binoculars said he ran into the woods. I thought I had missed! So we then headed down the hill to see if we could find a blood trail and we found nothing. I said, “Let’s go back to the cabin and get the rest of the guys to do a search”. On my way back I stopped and talked to another hunter. He asked, “Was that you who shot?” I said, “Yes”. He asked, “Did you get one?” I said, “I think I got a 6 point, but I’m not sure”. He said, “I was sitting in my stand 100 yards to the east of you and I heard something run into the wood and crash into the ground, I think you got something”. So Holly and I made our way back to the cabin to gather up the search crew and we all headed back out to the scene to start the search with flash lights. We searched the woods for about 10 minutes and I hear my buddy Dave L. scream BBD(big buck down)! My other buddy Richard G. screamed, CHRIS, you shot a 10 point man! Holly screamed, “You got him babe, get over here!” I ran over and arrived to him lying in the leaves motionless and everyone was staring down at him in disbelief like it wasn’t real. With no blood trail we were all wondering where I had shot him and our emotions were high. Hard to believe, we then pulled him 50 yards back to the truck drove him back to the meat pole to take pictures and field dress him. I took him to Dean’s Bait and Tackle on M-33 to hang him on their buck pole. Mark and Tam Foster unofficially measured him out first at 157.3 and I found out when I took him to the Butcher Boy in Warren he weighed out 155lbs dressed.
 
-Chris Olsen Jr.