By the metric of hours sitting in the deer stand, this was almost certainly the longest hunting season I've experienced. I started off keeping a record, but the exercise of cataloging failed hunts was simply too discouraging.
There were additional reasons to be discouraged. I've seen precious few deer on the 30 or so times I've hunted. On only four of those hunts did I see any that were even marginally within range. On three of those four my poor job of concealment gave me away and the deer spooked. Twice the spooked deer was a small buck that I coveted.
