“Nice buck… Wow! Great spread… Cool drop-tine on that buck… Oh my God!!! It’s him…”Those were the thoughts running through my head one Saturday night in mid-November as I admired the bucks on the check station “Trophy Wall” just down the road from our farm. The last picture was of a deer I would know anywhere. It was Deuce…
The Beginning
The thoughts running through my head at that moment were eerily similar to the ones that ran through my head at a photo kiosk at the Wal-Mart in Ripley, WV in late June of 2007. “Good potential… Great doe! And healthy fawns… Oh my God! It’s him…”
I had spent the evening before checking cameras and getting my food plots lined out. I decided to stop at Wal-Mart to review my pictures and print off any that were worth keeping. I was hoping to see pictures of a buck I caught crossing through my original food plot early in May. I noticed in those pictures, that he had two scars on his front-left knee. On the newest picture, I was able to see that he had a split brow-tine on one side and a triple split on the other. It wasn’t long before I decided that “Deuce” would be the deer I would hunt during my 2007 season.
The hunt is on…
It was a long, hot summer after that picture and to make matters worse, my new friend never visited the mineral site during the remainder of the summer. I was beginning to rethink my new found “quest” when he walked back into my life on the opening week of bow season. It was late September and there he was in all his glory posing for the Cuddeback. Everything looked in tack and I could count 12 scorable points. And if I was not already excited enough, I could see my treestand in the background of the picture! I was certain the shredded trees all around the area surrounding my best stand, belonged to him. I felt it was just starting to come together.
For the next two months, he avoided the camera. I had made every move that I felt was safe to make and here I was sitting empty handed. It was now mid-December and our second gun-season had just concluded the day before. I headed to the farm to pull the cards from all my cameras and replenish my winter feed site. As I was checking the first camera, my four-wheeler ran out of gas. It proved to be an unfortunate set of circumstances that created a chance encounter...
As I walked around the head of a brushy draw I had just driven by, I caught movement below. Holding nothing but a memory card, I watched as he bounded away from his bed and stopped broadside at 50 yards. The first thought that ran through my head, “Oh my God. It’s him.” Then it quickly turned to, “Where was he when we pushed that yesterday?!?” I was dumbfounded and upset at the same time due to the fact that I had bumped him. But he gave me a new piece to the puzzle and it would prove to come in handy down the road. When I returned to the four-wheeler, I bumped him from the sanctuary next to where I was stranded. This second encounter, seemed like it was purely just to rub it in! But if that wasn’t enough… When I checked the pictures on that camera, I was “blessed” with the only daytime picture of his career under my stand the day prior. Thanks to 20mph winds and freezing rain, I had stayed home to spend time with my then fiancé, now wife Tracie. Had I hunted, that was the stand I was hunting. It was a mistake that still haunts me.
Just flaunting himself a mere 30 yards from my stand…
At this point, I felt he was using the brushy draw to bed in when the weather was nasty. I hung a stand and a camera at the main creek-crossing where everything pinches down. I hunted 17 evenings in January and endured nearly 50 hours of brutal cold, wind, sleet, and general misery and was left with a hearty bowl of tag-soup when it was all said and done. Over the month of January, he walked within 25 yards of my stand no less than 21 times. At his closest, he showed up 5 minutes before legal shooting light and I was nowhere to be found. Out of that series of pictures, I was left with what will always be my favorite…
What will 2008 bring?
I was able to get pictures of Deuce into February of 2008 before the well went dry. It was another long, grueling off-season with plenty of practice, new food plots, all new set-ups, more cameras, increased feeding, and a steady supply of fresh minerals. I planted a new food plot of turnips and brassicas just for the late-season and hung two new set-ups that were right in what I was coming to believe was his “core-area”. I anxiously waited all spring for that first velvet picture to pop up on my computer screen. I had a gut feeling he would be back. And as he had done three times before, he did not let me down. By mid-May, he had stopped to pay me a visit…
The addition of a BuckEye Cam wireless system to the arsenal that summer made it much easier for me to stay out of his core area. One mistake I took from the 2007 season was that I was too anxious to get a hold of the latest picture and I pressed myself to stay off the farm in 2008, and out of the minerals, unless I needed to be there. I only replenished my minerals when I could do it in the rain and all the effort paid off with a series of photos that allowed me to watch him grow throughout the summer…
June
July
August
Let the hunt continue…
By this point, the hunt for Deuce had reached a level I had never expected. I had developed a profound respect for this deer. I struggled with whether or not I should continue to hold out for him. I had other properties that could produce deer of this caliber at any moment. "But what about the story?" It was now all about the story. One of my life’s mottos is: “Anything that makes a good story is worth doing.” I wanted to write the final chapter to this “fairytale” and it would be one that would allow me to show him the respect he deserved. I was hoping to play a role in one of the best stories I would ever be apart of. But the hunt that led me to actually hold his rack in my hands was not the one I hoped to write home about…
Prior to leaving for our honeymoon this September, I heard rumors of a giant deer that had been hit down the road from our farm. I could not bring myself to believe it was him. "What was he doing down there?" There was a small part of me that hoped it was him so I could move on and rid myself of this “demon”. But at same time, I hoped he would walk back into my life like he had always done in the past.
Over the course of the first month of our season, I continued to hunt where I thought I would see him. I was running four cameras at this point and moving them every 7-10 days trying my hardest to get back on him. As my fears of his unlikely demise began to grow, he did what he was now becoming famous for doing and on October 29, 2008, he stepped in front of a camera for the last time while he was alive. He was crossing the bottom directly between my two new set-ups and he walked within 25 yards of the one I expected to kill him from; and no more than an hour after I had climbed out of that very stand. I was getting ‘o so close!!! This was the last of over 200 pictures taken of him in 8 different locations on our farm…
