Since 2017 it takes a lot to get me fired up over a whitetail deer. It was in 2017 I decided to fulfill a lifelong dream of mine and start raising whitetail deer with the business plan to raise only genetics that originated in Texas from wild Texas deer and use those genetics to stock ranches that have been mismanaged. That’s exactly what I did and started accumulating genetics that would dna back to the original stock caught from pastures in south Texas. The last time
I had gotten excited was a huge 8 point that I had hunted for 2 years and killed him in 2016.

In 2019 I passed up the 2nd largest buck killed on low fence in the state of Texas that year and asked my partners son if he wanted to hunt him. He thought I was playing a demented game with him but soon realized I wanted him to shoot the deer when I started laying out the game plan for how he was going to accomplish this on opening weekend. Sure enough the 239” giant stepped out Sunday afternoon and finished second that year in the TBGA.

In 2020 we again had a 200” buck show up on surgery and cameras and we watched him all summer long, but again I had no desire to shoot him so we laid out a plan that the buck would not cooperate with. My neighbor to the north ended up tagging the bucks during the middle of bow season and to my understanding set some sort of an SCI record.

Every year we have at least 1 or 2 bucks that most hunters would give their appendages for, but I have stayed content for the last 8 years taking my sons to kill their first management bucks and cull bucks. This year started off no different. During the survey we had several young deer that were 150’s to mid 160’s but all far too young to put on a hit list. Seems like we were missing some age brackets this year. So our plan for harvest this year was to take out as many culls and managements and does as we could to make less competition for our up and comers.

I didn’t get to make it to the ranch with my boys nearly as much as I would like to, in fact first trip I took was to take a young man, his brother and his dad to try to kill their first deer. For whatever reason, we were snake bit and came up empty. We never come up empty!!! So we made a plan to bring the group back out later in the season. But first my boys were hounding me to go.

We are on MLD so we get to hunt later. Mid January I make it out with my two sons and we are targeting does. Get there late on a Friday afternoon and blow deer off of the stand. Get up and out to one of the blinds early the next morning and knock down a doe. That afternoon we hunt what we call the Oat Field. This time of year when all the neighbors turn off their feeders, this blind is good for 50+ deer. Tonight was no different. Several of my young up and comers came out and were feeding and we were waiting on a couple of different groups of does to get in close enough for a shot. The oat field is about 30 acres and has a 1,000 yard rifle rang that spans the length of it. One group of does was at the NE corner and the other groups was at the SE corner. Off the.hill coming toward the SE corner does I noticed a nice buck from about 500 yards away. I didn’t think much of it as I figured it was just another one of my up and comers and I literally see big bucks out of my back door everytime I step outside at my home.

As I kept my eyes on these 2 groups of does they took their precious time cutting the distance to get off a neck shot for one of my boys. This gave us plenty of time to look at other things and gave me the opportunity to study my young bucks. About 10 minutes had passed since I had first laid eyes on the buck from the hill and by this time he had cut the distance substantially from when I first saw him. As I looked at him with the naked eye at 250 yards I thought to myself, “Dang, that deers got a frame!!! Dang, that deers got fantastic brow tines!!” When I grabbed my binos and looked at him the first time the thought came to me, “He looks like he escaped from one of my pens!!!” So now I really started studying him. Then I started comparing him to my up and comers that I had 1,000’s of pics of from the season and decided he was much older than them and much bigger!!! I immediately texted my partners son and asked him to text me the pics of all the biggest bucks that he had saved on his phone. He did and he send pics of every buck we had. None of them matched this buck. I started describing the buck to him and no bells rang with him either. I’m actually excited!!! He immediately starts texting me to shoot him. My 12 year old is in my ear, “Dad you gotta shoot that deer!!” I’m actually excited. I have my crosshairs on him, my finger on the trigger with the safety off and was just about to shoot the biggest buck of my life…. And I stopped. Lifted my head and looked at my son and said I can’t do it. He said “You’re an idiot!! What do you mean you can’t do it?” You see I’ve managed this place since 2009 to get it to produce the deer that it does by sticking to basic rules and principles. One of this is to positively identify each and every deer and their age before deciding to take them. I had no history on this deer and I had implemented a strict 6.5 year old policy for trophies. I was 95% sure this deer was 6.5 but I wanted to knock that other 5% off or at least try before I took him. So I set the rifle back in the corner and let the sun set before we snuck out of the blind. That evening we broke out the laptops and poured over 6 months worth of pics from 10 different cameras with no sign of this buck on any of them. I asked when the last time we pulled cards and it had been a few weeks. We went out that night and pulled them. This buck had showed up 3 days prior to me seeing him. I got to study him at different angles over the course of about 100 pics and affirmed to me that he was indeed a new buck and was of age. So I laid my head down that night knowing the next morning what I was going to do. But he did not cooperate. I had to get my boys back for baseball practice so I told my partners son to go get him. He looked at me like I was crazy but wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity to take another 200” buck. Sure enough that evening the buck came out into the oat field, but he never stopped chasing a doe fawn and ran her completely out of the pasture so he never got a shot off.

It would be 2 weeks before I could make it back to the ranch and I was scheduled to take the same young man, his brother and dad. My partners son said, I really think you should cancel and just concentrate of hunting “Epstein” (so called for his affinity for young females and the fact he wasn’t going to kill himself). I said no I’m not going to do that, but I will get out there on Friday night and hunt him since they won’t be able to show up until Saturday morning. Again something about my sanity was said, but I could at least sleep at night. The Wednesday before I was scheduled to go to the ranch the young man’s father called me and said I hate to do this but Corbin just informed me he has a choir concert on Saturday that he can’t get out of so we won’t be able to make it this weekend. I get more enjoyment out of watching others hunt than I do for myself, when it comes to whitetails anyway. My conciliation prize though was being able to hunt Epstein the entire weekend. Turns out all I would need was Friday night.

To the Oat Field I went and was met by the neighbors cows…. Thoughts, bad thoughts crossed my mind. They finally fed further away and the first deer started milling around in the trees. About 15 minutes later he appeared in the native grass field with 4 other bucks about 800 yards away. They worked their way into the trees and lo and behold if he didn’t bed down just inside the trees. Dark is approaching fast and as Smokey said, “he’s got a long way to go and a short time to get there!!” So far 5 minutes I agonize watching this deer bedding down and taking a break. About that time a doe and a young buck walk right past him on the trail he was laying beside and start making their way toward the field. He stands up!! It was as though they challenged him to a race to the oats. He took off at a dead run and didn’t stop until he was in the middle of the oat field. About that time the corn feeder went off and he and another buck made a sprint for it. Now with it being this late in the year I’m always thinking about antlers falling off, so when he was nose to that feeder all I could think of was him lurching into that feeder and knocking antlers off or breaking something off, so I waited. He would not face away from that feeder. I sat there with cross hairs on him for 10 minutes waiting for the perfect no-chance-of-collision shot. Only for him to throw his head up in air, look in my direction and commence to running straight towards me to cut the distance in half!!! I couldn’t believe it. The deer I let walk from a 120 yard chip shot, 2 weeks prior, had given me the exact same chance again. He turned broadside and I calmly touched the trigger. He jumped and kicked, so I knew the 308 had hit him, but he took off like a rocket, running past each berm of dirt that marked 100 yards across the rife range, after he passed the 1,000 marker and was back out in the native grass field I had my cross hairs on him ready to squeeze another broadside shot off when I noticed the blood covering his opposite shoulder. He was on borrowed time and it ran out as I watched him sway and topple over. I was excited!!

Great story and congrats on an awesome buck!

Buck of a life time
Thanks for sharing the story with us

That is an awesome story and one heck of a deer thank you for sharing.

Wow!!

Big congrats!

Congrats & awesome story

Great story and a beautiful deer. Congrats!

The most important part of this story that is amazing to me...your neighbors and you are on the same page as to letting them walk. That's a special arrangement and from what I've seen rarely found.

Great story big mass

Goodern

Congratulations sir

very nice sir

Great buck and great story! Congratulations!

Can't say that enough!

It wasn’t like that always. It took several years to get everyone on the same page. The beer drinking group to the south didn’t ever care and was like “whatever dude, we’re just here to play domino's”. The ranch to the east is 12,000 acres and they might allow one hunter a year. The ranch two my north was the hold out, but once they got on board the age structure jumped within a couple of years and they started seeing the benefits of those 2 extra years.

Hell of a deer and story that matches. Congrats!

Great buck.

Congratulations! What a monster buck!

Great story and awesome deer

Very cool you got them to come around to the letting them walk thinking. Congrats again!

Big Congrats

That buck was certainly worth the wait even for the saviest of hunters, it would give most folks a heart attack before they could pull the trigger.
Super buck with character, dig the palmation.

Have you scored it yet?

I haven’t. My taxidermist has the skull cap I just need to go by and get it. I have a sneaking suspicion he will gross the magic number.

Awesome story and a great deer!