The sunrise was only a few minutes old as I comfortably sat high in a massive cottonwood, enjoying the new day. The South Platte River flowed silently, 100 yards south of my position.

After nearly 20 years of trying, I finally arrowed a trophy Colorado whitetail.

It was my third day of hunting in mid-November, the peak of the whitetail rut in Colorado. Earlier, as I'd crossed the river and hiked a half mile to my stand, I'd predicted another 10-hour day in the tree. That's a long sit, but with the rut smoking hot, I would enjoy a full day in the stand.

Now, peacefully taking in the sights, I jumped at the sound of two branches breaking successively. Without even looking behind me, I instinctively stood and grabbed my longbow off the hook.

The buck trotted to a scrape halfway between the river and me, pawed the scrape a half-dozen times, and then turned toward me and followed a trail to another scrape 25 yards west of my stand. Clearly I could see five points on each beam, and my heart raced at the sight of his beam mass and the length of his tines. Gripping my bow, I mentally geared up for a shot I had prepared for all year.

Many of my hunting buddies have accused me of being an extremely lucky bowhunter. While I have had many special hunting moments, and I do seem to get a deer in Colorado every year, I've certainly been challenged to harvest a truly large whitetail buck in Colorado.

I've been wandering around the South Platte River bottoms for almost 20 years, and I've had the good fortune to acquire ownership interests in two acreages that are occupied by both mule deer and whitetails. The properties lie only an hour's drive northeast of my home in Denver, so they're pretty handy to scout and hunt on the weekends.

While the trophy quality for both species in my hunting areas is okay, the whitetails aren't even close to the caliber of deer in states like Illinois or Kansas. I'll admit, I like to score my deer, and as a senior member of the Pope and Young Club, I like to enter my deer into the P&Y record book. Still, during 18 years of concerted hunting, I had taken only one whitetail deer in Colorado that met the P&Y minimum of 125 inches, and I'd taken a couple of others that just missed due to broken tines.

I once asked one of America's leading bowhunters why he had never bought a western ranch for deer and elk hunting. He is wealthy and could easily afford a large acreage. His response was that he wanted to hunt only trophy animals, and he didn't want to be tied to one place.