The buck of a lifetime

As an avid whitetail deer hunter I have been lucky to harvest some super bucks.  Each hunt has a permanent memory etched in my mind.  Unfortunately, I have also missed some super bucks.  One cold November evening comes to mind.  Not only did I miss a huge buck once, I managed to miss him three times before he took one leap into a blackberry thicket never to cross the sights on my Remington 6 mm again.  That old boy had long split brow tines and a cedar limb hanging across at least 20+ inches of antler width.  When he came out along the creek bottom it only took one hit from my grunt tube to stop him broadside less than 100 yards below me.   And like all lessons learned, I see that buck each fall as I prepare for the upcoming hunting season and remember to hold down just a hair if needed.  For a fellow deer hunter in Tennessee this past year, he had the opportunity of a lifetime and he almost missed it!

“On the first day of deer hunting season, Stephen Tucker, a 27-year-old farmer in Tennessee, shouldered his muzzleloader and aimed at a whitetail with an extraordinary rack, one so big that it would be a world record if his aim was true.

The antlers, a spectacular protrusion of bones that splayed into dozens of points, were the stuff of hunting lore. The buck had clearly lived long and lived well.”

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