The windshield wipers on my friend's big Ford truck thump back and forth in fruitless sweeps against driving rain, and it sounds like someone is pouring buckets of nails down onto the roof of the truck cab.

Geared low and lumbering, the truck wrenches from side to side in the wheel ruts, snapping our heads left and right as its tires alternately spin and grab. If I hadn't been here before, I'd think we were driving right up a mountain stream.My friend has to shout so I can hear him, that's how loud it is inside the truck. He glances over at me and we look at each other. "We're crazy," he says, and we might be.It's a cold and rainy day, perfect for hunting big bucks. There have been other times we've hunted in bad weather, but this might be one of the worst. According to the weather report, there is a chance the rain will stop about an hour before dark. Perfect, we hope, because the deer will move.Although there's a permanent tree stand in the area, I choose a climbing stand because of wind direction. It's a young oak, with spindly branches providing no more shelter than an umbrella skeleton. I inch my safety rope as I climb to a level that seems perfect.I pull my hood tight and press back into the tree best I can. The temperature drops steadily. I hadn't wanted to wrestle with my big pack up in the climber in the rain, so my jacket pockets hold just the bare necessities. Nothing moves for a couple hours. The rain is loud against the thick leaf litter and fog begins to roll through the woods like dry ice smoke at a prom.The woods begin to darken, as if controlled by a giant dimmer switch. The rain is relentless. The fog lies low and thick along the forest floor. Finally, deer begin to move as a party of does, followed shortly by a fork-horn, travel right by my tree.The fog hits them about midway up their sides, and as they move through the woods they look like a group of ships. It's so beautiful to see that it takes my breath away.It takes my breath away. I pull back my hood so I can see better and take out that call, turn it over once, twice, for the estrus bleat. The fork-horn rematerializes near the base of my tree, emerging from the thickening fog like he's beamed up from the forest floor. He looks around very carefully; he can't see well either in all the rain and fog. I give him time to clear the area and hit the call again.With my hood down, my fleece hat is quickly soaked and icy rain is trickling between my shoulder blades and into my eyes. My hands are cold claws. I turn the hot doe call over again and again, and again and again various bucks appear out of the fog. A six, an eight and a nine, nothing big enough by Heartland standards, but I'm drawing a straight of ghost bucks.The last thing to take form, as the brown blobs appear and move closer, morphing into deer, are the racks. Again and again I ready my bow, squinting into the rain and fog, wide enough, good mass, long tines? Sometimes, I just can't tell.As darkness comes, the line between seeing bucks and dreaming of bucks begins to blur. In the months to come, the cold rainy afternoon becomes an awesome memory.Maybe one of the best things about big bucks is the anticipation of them, and the motivation they inspire. Like ghosts, they are rarely seen, but for believers and dreamers they can always be envisioned. We shoot, we make ready. Rain pelts us but we go, for they are out there, and they may come.