Then once they finally noticed they were too close, they turned around and eventually found one of my 2-persons stands. They proceeded to climb into my stand only 125 yards away. 
Instead of ruining my hunt any worse, I decided to hunt it out. I saw nothing and climbed down about 9:15am to slip over closer to introduce myself to my new friends. To my surprise, they must have slipped out about the same time I climbed down. I hunted another couple hours then left for lunch.I got back in the stand about 2:40pm with the wind starting to pick up and had a small buck slip through not ten minutes later. I watched him for a while and had decided to pass on him until he keep getting close. By the time he got into bow range, I decided it fill a tag instead of risking getting blown away any longer. Since we get 3 buck tags, the small 6pt was just a meat buck.
Smile for the trailcam selfie!
Of course, you wouldn't smile so big if you knew you could have waited a couple hours and taken this much bigger one instead.
The bucks are certainly trolling for does in Virginia.
I took off work Tuesday because the wind finally calmed down. I saw one small buck seeking around 8am, then had a nicer buck chase a doe through a thicket about 9am. The nicer buck was a shooter, but it was too thick for the >80 yard shot. After a two hour break for lunch, I was back in a tree by 1:30pm. The afternoon hunt was quiet until a doe came bounding through for no reason about 3:45pm. I never did see what had her on the move. She stopped behind me and continued to browse about 75 yards away.
Finally about 4:30pm, I caught movement coming my way along the edge of the ridge skirting the thickets. A quick glance through the scope led me to conclude it could be the same buck I saw chasing a doe in the morning. When he reached his closest point at about 60 yards, the CVA dropped the hammer. He made it about 50 yards. He ended up being an average 8pt.
The bucks are certainly in seek mode here in Northern Virginia. I'm seeing more bucks than does. If you want to bag a buck, now is a great time to be in the woods. With only one tag left and a lot of season, I'll have to make the next tag count. The next tag filled will come with a taxidermy bill.
DuckHunt
