Double Trouble Joe Kosack Associate Editor I T WA S a n afternoon I planned to stay off the mountain. Snow squalls were in the forecast. There was a biting wind. Temperatures were to peak in the low 40s. But I had that u r g e , y o u k n o w, the need to be up there. Plus, it was the Friday before the fall turkey season. It would be one of the last days on Second Mountain without company. At 2 p.m. I loaded the car and went. The climb up the southern slope was cold in a T-shirt that day. In fact, I couldn't wait to cover it with a long-sleeve shirt after I crested the top. I dropped into a run where I had been seeing a large buck cruising for does in the distance the previous week. It was the inaugural year of antler restrictions, and that buck wasn't going to come up short. It had rack to spare. I climbed a red oak near a small pocket of young hemlocks about 100 yards west of where I was hunting when I saw the buck. With my stand pointing south, I watched for bucks moving east and west trying to intercept does 26 heading off the top toward cornfields along the base. Within 20 minutes, I saw movement to the west. It was him, and he was coming my way. I tightened the grip I had on my Browning bow as he slowly slipped between the trees. At about 75 yards out he turned suddenly and went southeasterly, sort of skirting around me. I looked on with contempt as the WWW.PENNGAMENEWS.COMhttp://WWW.PENNGAMENEWS.COM