Texas outfitter Frank Fackovec and Petersen's Hunting "Hunt of a Lifetime" contest winner Michael Schuenke with Michael's nice Hill Country whitetail.

He paraded in front of me until it was too dark to see, running off the lesser bucks and checking out the does. This time I raised the rifle, a T/C Encore in .30-06, and I watched him through my scope, visualizing perfect shot placement as he presented every imaginable angle.

I never cocked the hammer, and I never seriously considered shooting him. After all, I had already passed up a larger buck., the rut was on, and I had time.

The next few days were warmer but not unseasonably so. There was a bit of wind now and then, but never a gale. I didn't see another mature buck, either. What did I expect? Mother Nature had smiled at me twice and both times I had kicked sand in her face.

A few weeks passed before I flew to San Antonio to accompany Kimber's Dwight Van Brunt and Minnesotan Michael Schuenke, winner of Petersen's Hunting "Hunt of a Lifetime" sweepstakes. We hunted with Frank Fackovec of Texas Outfitters Ltd. (800/TEX-HUNT, www.texasoutfitters.com) northwest of San Antonio, where the Hill Country gives way to the Edwards Plateau.

Frank had a wonderful, friendly camp based around an old ranch house, and the oak motte country was beautiful. This is not what is considered big-buck country, but it's a great place to hunt whitetails. Hill Country deer tend to be small-bodied and basket-racked, but it's country where you will see a lot of whitetails, and if you take your time there are some very good bucks to be had.

Michael had just come off his own whitetail season in Minnesota, where he shivered on his stand for seven days straight without seeing a single deer. Now he was knee-deep in them. It wasn't fair. So he shot himself a nice, typical Hill Country buck early in the hunt and felt pretty good about it.

Me, I was still being picky--egged on by Frank, who encouraged my patience. We started at a stand on the edge of some heavy cover and saw a number of young bucks, but the only grownup deer was an old, heavy-antlered six-pointer, a fine management buck but not what we wanted. Then we switched to a stand on the edge of a big, grassy meadow, an ideal place for bucks to cruise and chase.

I think we saw a dozen bucks on our first morning in that stand. They were all youngsters ranging from spikes up to pretty nice eight-pointers. All except one.

This buck was also an eight-pointer, but his neck was swollen and he towered above the younger bucks when he swaggered into the clearing. We watched him for a long time, but one of the other guides had seen a big 10-pointer in the area so we held off.

It was overcast and cool, the kind of day when bucks should be moving all day, so after lunch we headed right back out. I don't think we were 10 minutes from camp when we spotted a doe, far across a shallow valley and up on the low, brushy ridge beyond. We stopped and glassed, and there was a buck with her all right, standing back behind some brush.

He looked good at first glance, so we crawled closer. We were something like 275 yards away when he stepped out, and he was a dandy--wide, heavy, 10 well-matched points. I got the Kimber .308 set up over a daypack and waited for a reasonable presentation. And then I just flat blew the shot.

That evening we were back in our stand, treated to the same procession of young bucks. There must have been different morning and evening shifts in this area--several of these were bucks we hadn't seen before. As sunset approached, I figured I'd used up all my chances

Then a couple of the younger bucks stared hard to our right into the thick oaks beyond our vision. It didn't take long for our curiosity to be rewarded.

Out of the woods and into the dusky evening swaggered the same big eight-pointer we'd seen that morning. He came on like King of the Field. And although he wasn't the buck I'd started the season hoping for, or the kind I'd passed in Kentucky, or missed just that morning, he was a fully mature, grown-up whitetail.

I watched him glide in for a while. Then I set up for the shot and waited until he cleared a tree, then waited a bit more while a younger buck stepped out of the line of fire. Then I shot him. And so ended my Year of the Whitetail.