Hunting - Another memory to read.

It was the middle of November during gun season and I was working from 7:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. and was thinking all day of going deer hunting after work. I thought all day till I got off work where I wanted to hunt but the problem was that it had been raining all day with 10 - 15 m.p.h. winds. I got off work headed to one of my favorite hunting sites and as I drove there it came to me just where it would be that I would hunt for the rest of the evening. I parked in an old barnyard road bed and walked back approximately 400 yards crossed the fence after seeing another hunter and crossed the field to a elm tree on the corner with a cedar tree next to it which gave me some cover from the elements ( rain and wind ) and cover from the deer spotting me. After settling in to my tree for the evening I watched the field and the grown up cedar tree thicket next to me for any movement as darkness quickly came upon me. As luck would have it about 40 minutes after I settled into the tree two doe's and a nice buck was spotted running across the open field toward the cedar thicket.The deer came from where I had seen the other hunter and I couldn't figure why this hunter didn't attempt to shoot the buck but was glad for whatever the reason was. I raised my 35 caliber rifle a squeezed a shot which hit just under the bucks feet. The buck turned heading down the fence row and I knew it was going to cross the fence into the cedar thicket where it would disappear possibly forever from me,so I quickly reloaded for a second shot. I knew the buck was almost at the low spot in the fence where they had been crossing and I had to be fast. As I drew the scope across the top of the bucks back I again squeezed the trigger and the buck then turned running back across the field where it laid down in a small patch a tall sage brush. I watched the sage brush patch for 5-10 minutes then quickly got down out of my tree and began walking toward the sage patch.As I got close enough to the patch to see the buck I realized he was dead and then looked to admire his rack and at first glance took it to be a nice 6 point but then seen it was a great 8 point with a rack that matched one I had taken two years earlier just one field back from where I was. I also noticed a bullet hole in the bucks backbone area but no bone was there just the spinal cord hanging in between both sections which puzzled me as to how this buck could run or even walk with this kind of hole in it's backbone. I later found out that a friend of mine had shot a big buck at some 350 yards and knew he had hit it but was unable to find the buck until he saw my buck and told me that was the buck he had shoot the weekend before I had killed it. Unbelievable what deer can go though to survive but that's what makes us memories isn't it?