Like proud parents, we can't help but brag about our readers—America's best deer hunters. Here are just a handful of the hundreds of candidates in Outdoor Life's Deer of the Year feature. Our favorites will appear in the April 2009 issue of Outdoor Life.

My name is Brian Krutsinger I live in central Illinois. Two days before the first gun season I saw this deer in the middle of a bean field with a doe pinned down and a curious little buck pestering this guy. As I drove off, the deer ran away from my hunting area into the next section two miles in the opposite direction from where I hunt. Thinking that would be the last time I'd see him, I went on my way to work. 

I called the guy that hunts the land next to me and told him about the deer and to send him back in my direction. On the last day of the first season about 9:30 in the morning—just about ready to pack it in—I saw movement in the thick stuff. I could tell right away it was him. He was almost crawling through the brush when he got to the edge of the river he had a choice to turn north or south. North it was. I drew up the 870 SP,  laid the crosshairs on him as he trotted through the timber, but saw only tree after tree. He was at 80 yards and I couldn't let him go any further. I cracked one off and he froze—big mistake. The next shot dropped him in his tracks. How he made it through the first two days of the season and all the way back to my area I'll never know but am glad he did. 

He is a main frame 8-pointer grossing around 172 (unofficial) has a couple of points on the left base. It's biggest deer of my 30 years of hunting.