''Got him on a trail camera, now I'm hoping to get him on the ground,'' the Crete man e-mailed.

That's what some 200,000-plus of us are thinking this week. I used it as the lead to my column about Illinois' first firearm deer season Friday through Sunday.

E-mail nominations for BOTW, the weekly celebration of big bucks taken by hunters around Chicago outdoors Wednesdays on the Sun-Times outdoors page, to straycasts@sbcglobal.net.