Lucky for Tom Schneider, the Green Bay Packers were having a bad afternoon, which led to his spending the last 90 minutes of hunting light in his "backyard" ground blind.

It was November 2, 2008, and the rut wasn't quite on time. Tom Schneider is sort of an old-school hunter in that instead of running and gunning and trying to pattern every buck in the woods, he waits. In fact, he waits for the rut before he even steps onto his best stands, which are carefully picked and set in those key areas that always seem to hold the real keepers moving through his acreage. Tom had hunted that morning -- his first sit of the season in one of his "A" spots -- but the woods were as quiet and lonely as the shores of the Dead Sea.

"The weather wasn't optimal for hunting," Tom said, "but the Packers were looking dismal that day, so I threw on my gear and walked to a spot about 100 yards from my home to spend the last 90 minutes of daylight."

It was a southeast wind, which meant hunting from his homemade ground blind off a little food plot would be perfect. Tom, now 52 years old, found himself using ground blinds more and more since surviving a fall 15 years ago that fractured one of his vertebrae.

After sitting for a few minutes, he saw a nice buck about 80 yards out and working his way to the food plot.

"I gave him one soft grunt and he immediately looked in my direction," Tom said. "I like to wait until a buck starts walking to grunt again. Behind my blind is an extremely thick pine plantation the buck could not see into, so I made a series of more aggressive calls, trying to mimic a buck tending a doe. It worked out great, because the buck couldn't see into the pines and had to investigate."

The buck was a good one by Tom's standards, in the 120-class.

"I'm not a numbers guy," he said. "I pass up a lot of bucks but don't really consider myself a trophy hunter. I'm lucky in that we have a place in Michigan where I take three to five does a year, so there's really no reason for me to take a buck unless he's nice. My freezer is full. Still, if the antlers are out to the ears, and there's some decent length to his tines, I'll try to end my season."

Instead of committing to the food plot, the buck circled the perimeter of the soybeans and entered the pines, looking for the source of the noise.

"The pines are perfect for the rut because a lot of does bed there and the bucks go in looking for them," Tom continued. "With an hour of light still left, I hoped the buck would come back out. I didn't want to overcall this early in the season."

A few minutes had passed when a doe and her fawn entered the half-acre plot and began to feed.

"They hadn't been bumped out by the buck and were at ease," Tom said. "The deer were only about 20 yards away when I heard some grunting in the pines."

Tom was sure the grunting came from the buck he'd seen earlier.