Buck on the verge

Where was my camera:  this morning after opening the garage door I headed out to the chicken coop.  Right in the middle of the lower Jennifer Trail, not 50 feet from me was a buck.  He blended in with the brown leaves and the sun wasn't over Bald Eagle so I didn't get a count of his points, but I think he might have had 2 plus the prong.  He was a big animal but leggy, not husky in the chest.  He watched me walk to the coop and didn't flag his tail until I passed him again on my way back to the house. 
We've seen a scratched area in the dirt near the camping spot and other evidence of rubs and smells.  Now we know we have at least one deer at the Barony.

Monster deer at Paradise Ranch

From the Baron and Gambol:

This morning at 0800 when I took Gambol out for a walk we had a real experience--there was about 3-4 inches of new powdery snow and under that was a layer of ice. Every step caused a crunching sound as the ice broke in a oval around my boots. We were making a racket walking along one of the forest trails that we usually take. It runs to our property line where you can see the old 10-12 foot high fence that surrounds the hunting lodge property behind us. The fence was installed to keep the imported trophy deer and elk within the hunting property's 777 acre boundaries. As we approached the fence I noticed that there was a horizontal shape, the size of a large log, on the other side of the fence that shouldn't have been there. It was the profile of a huge deer (I want to say it was a mule deer because of its size) and it had what I estimate was an 8 point rack with a spread of 2.5 to 3 ft--this was a monster deer. It was watching us approach and I could see it move its head and antlers as it tried to get a better look at us through the branches of the trees that are on our side of the fence. At this point Gambol spotted the deer and barked several times. This did not seem to bother the big buck and he slowly walked away from us, perpendicular to the fence up a 20 ft wide logging trail. I turned Gambol around and he got back to sniffing the snow for squirrels and rabbit tracks and I looked back at the buck--it had turned back towards us and was watching us leave.
Well when I returned from the dentist at 1300 I took Gambol out again and sure enough, the buck is still in the same area. I turned us around before we got too close so we wouldn't spook it--although it sure wasn't spooked when we saw it this morning. I planned to take the camera by myself (sorry Gambol) and see if I can capture it with pixels later this afternoon. What a monster of a deer!
As you might imagine, when I returned to the area at 1500 with the camera around my neck there was no sign of the big buck. I think I will try to look for him again over the next few days, but I will have a camera with me just in case.

After later research: It turns out that Paradise Ranch is being renovated.