Alex Templeton didn’t know if her buck had made it through rifle season. She’d been watching him for nearly two years at that point, seeing him mature over the years on trail camera photos from her family’s Missouri farm. She’d decided long ago that this was the buck she wanted to hunt, but she hadn’t seen him at all through early, pre-rut archery season, and he’d dropped off her cams for the entirety of the mid-November rifle season.

Leaving his job on Wall Street for the day, Eugene Burger boards the subway with hundreds of other people. Within a couple of hours he’s alone in his treestand. The stand provides a view of the Manhattan skyline and, sometimes, of the Boone and Crockett class bucks that call Long Island home.

The concept of deer camp goes back generations and is so often associated with history, heritage, and looking back at the past. But for photographer, Austin Thomas, and his best friends Taylor Cook and Gunnar Lovekamp, it’s all about living in the present.