WHEN THE BUCK shoved his heavy-antlered head through the curtain of thick undergrowth that separated him from the clear-cut area where the chain saws had been at work, I hesitated. The oncoming animal was 150 yards away — a long shot by the brush-country standards that prevail here in heavily wooded northeastern Tennessee. But it wasn’t the long range that kept me from squeezing off the shot.
For more than 20 of my 60 years I’ve been hunting deer with the Model 336 Marlin lever-action .30/30 carbine that I was carrying, and I had come to know its capabilities as well as I know my own. My hands were steady as I held the 15-year-old scope on the animal’s head and antlers while still trying to get a clear look at the rest of the big body.
What made me hesitate was that I couldn’t fit the size of the rack I was looking at onto a whitetail. I had seen hundreds of Tennessee deer, but the antlers I was now scoping with the 4X Weaver were so large that I was afraid they belonged to a rambling elk.
I couldn’t keep from visualizing those mighty horns and head on my living-room wall less than 20 miles away, and my trigger finger was on the verge of taking control over my mind.
Although Tennessee’s Unicoi County is thousands of miles from what is known as elk territory, my fear was not so farfetched as it sounds. Virginia, which borders Tennessee about 40 miles from where I was hunting, has a small elk herd. Could one of them have left the herd and migrated southward onto Rich Mountain, my prime deer-hunting grounds?
I have never hunted big game outside Tennessee and had never seen an elk, but I’d seen enough pictures of them to recognize one if I got a full view of him. I figured that if I was looking at a stray elk, shooting him was bound to be illegal. Still, I couldn’t keep from visualizing those mighty horns and head on my living-room wall less than 20 miles away, and my trigger finger was on the verge of taking control over my mind.
I was born in Washington County, Tennessee, and still live there. My home near Johnson City is just eight miles west of the waterfall behind which Daniel Boone once hid from Indians. Less than a mile from that four-foot waterfall in Boone’s Creek is a beech tree on which he carved the legend: “D. Boone cilled a bar here in year 1760.” On the Nolichucky River in neighboring Greene County stands the cabin in which Davy Crockett was born in 1786.
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When I left home last November 17, headed southwest out of Washington County, and crossed the Nolichucky 12 miles upstream from the Crockett cabin, I couldn’t have guessed that my name would soon go into the record book that bears the names of those two famous pioneers.
My feeling is strong for the land traveled by Boone and Crockett and for the times in which they lived and hunted. I’ve walked trails that both of those early hunters must have followed at some time. I’ve moved many tons of earth with small hand tools to uncover some 40,000 Indian relics and artifacts along the river banks of the region. One of the articles in my collection is a section of human backbone with an arrowhead still embedded in it.
During the summers I spend many an hour searching for Indian burial grounds and gathering knowledge that will tell us more about the hunters and fishermen who were here during and before the time of Boone and Crockett. Some of my finds go back to the time of the Early Woodland Indians of 6,000 years ago.
But I make time for fishing when they’re hitting and for hunting when the seasons come around. Hunting is a necessary part of my life, and I’ve brought up my two sons — Clyde, who is 38, and Roy, 28 — to be hunters. Both have killed their share of deer.
Before deer season opens Clyde, who lives near me, and I go into the mountains and hunt ruffed grouse with one or more of the three English setters I keep. Hunting quail in the rolling farm country around my home is easier, but struggling out of the deep hollows and up the steep ridges after grouse gets us in top shape for deer hunting. I won’t say it’s easy going for a grandfather, but I’m usually going strong when Clyde calls time out for a rest. In two years I’ll be retiring from plumbing and electrical work, and then I plan to hunt even more.
After crossing the Nolichucky River that day last November I drove my 1960 pickup as far as I could on a dead-end road in the Cherokee National Forest. I decided I wouldn’t rest until I got to the top of Rich Mountain. It would be about a three-hour hike, with the elevation increasing about 1,000 feet for each hour of walking. I’d had glimpses of some big deer on the mountaintop. I didn’t intend to move fast enough to spook any deer that might be moving down the mountainside. But it was 12:15, and I would have only a few hours for hunting on top, so I couldn’t loaf along on the way up.
The thick mat of leaves on the ground was damp from an early morning rain. The day was warm and bright, but the sun hadn’t been shining long enough to dry the leaves. Thus I could move a little faster than I usually do while deer hunting. No hint of a breeze was present to send my scent to any deer on the mountainside.
My appetite for getting a deer had been heightened by an archery hunt a week or so earlier. My sons and I had spent a few days with our bows on Tennessee’s Chuck Swann Wildlife Management Area, not far south of the Kentucky state line. Although the deer on this area are smaller than those around my home, they are plentiful. Bagging a deer in the management area wouldn’t affect my right to take one from nonmanaged areas.
Illustrated by Dave Blossom / Outdoor Life
I had seen more than 100 deer on the first day of that hunt. Some of them came as close as 10 feet to my tree stand. But only one deer that came within range of my 50-pound-pull bow was a legal buck with spikes at least three inches long. I thought he was mine for sure, but an unseen twig deflected my arrow, sending it into the ground under the small buck’s belly.
I figured I was due for some good luck now, and my anticipation was running high.
I had been moving up the mountainside for almost two hours when I heard the first sound that wasn’t made by a bird or a squirrel. It sounded like a dead branch falling from a tree, but I couldn’t be sure of the cause or of the direction from which it had come. I stopped and listened.
In a few seconds I heard more sounds, each distinctly closer than the previous one. The sounds came from several hundred yards away, but I began to identify them as noises made by a heavy animal approaching from somewhere to the right of my line of travel. I guessed that the animal would cross at an angle in front of me and not far away.
When I first saw the animal it was at least 100 yards the other side of the clear-cut. It was trotting in and out of small pockets of light that penetrated the thinner parts of the undergrowth, and I couldn’t see it well enough to tell whether it was a buck or a doe. lts gait slowed somewhat when it got to the denser growth that bordered the clear-cut.
I first saw that massive rack when the animal pushed his head into the clearing. It was then I became afraid that I might be looking at an elk. He paused a few seconds to check for danger. Then he trotted into the clearing. When I caught sight of his hindquarters, my hesitation ended — his white tail stood out like a banner of invitation. I centered the crosshairs just behind his left foreleg and squeezed the trigger.
When I caught sight of his hindquarters, my hesitation ended — his white tail stood out like a banner of invitation. I centered the crosshairs just behind his left foreleg and squeezed the trigger.
The shot had hardly gone off when the big buck’s knees buckled and his great head dropped almost to the ground. But his collapse lasted only an instant. From the speed and strength of his recovery I wouldn’t have believed that the Silvertip slug had hit him, except that I had never seen the crosshairs any steadier on a deer. The buck made a quick, slight turn and bounded straight toward me, coming with the kind of leaps an attacking big cat might use.
I had six more cartridges ready to jack into the Marlin’s chamber, but I knew it would be only a short time before the buck went down to stay.
He saw me when he was 50 feet away. He turned to escape, running to my left at a 90° angle and showing not the slightest evidence that he had been hit. He dropped into a small but deep hollow, crashing his 300-pound-plus body through the tops of fallen trees with the force of a crazed bear.
The buck was moving out of my sight, and at that speed he would soon be out of hearing if the heart in his rugged body didn’t give up quickly. Even though I was sure that death would come to him within one minute, it could take me hours or even days to track him if he got out of the hollow before collapsing. I broke into a run to keep from losing him. The thought of having to leave the buck overnight in woods populated by bears and wildcats added to my endurance.
I caught sight of the buck again as he started up the other side of the weave. Halfway to the top of the ridge, he staggered and fell to the ground. I reached him in sprinter’s time and then watched for some sign of life. There was none.
I immediately started counting points. I kept losing count and starting over again. That’s when the excitement hit me like a sledgehammer. I’d never seen anything like those antlers. Eighteen of the points measured the official minimum of one inch. One was three-quarters of an inch long, two more were broken off, and three other points were just nubs. That made 24 by my mountain method of point counting.
Then I looked at the body that had run a half-mile after a heart shot, and I knew I was in for a terrible time.
I heaved and struggled but was able to move the buck only 10 to 15 feet at a time between rests. When I came to fallen logs, I had to drag him around them. I knew I had to get help, but I was afraid to leave the buck on the ground unattended. The small block-and- tackle that I carry in my hunting coat when I’m deer hunting would help me get him off the ground. I attached the block to a heavy branch and secured the rope to the buck’s hind feet. I raised his hindquarters off the ground, and that was all I had the strength for.
I field-dressed the buck on the ground, lessening his weight by about 45 pounds, according to taxidermist Bob Short, who mounted the head and tanned the hide for me. Then I resumed dragging the buck. I’m a little over five feet 10 inches tall and weigh 200 pounds, with muscles toughened by a lifetime of hard work. But I soon reached the point where I didn’t have the strength to drag my buck another foot alone.
I walked to the home of Bert Coffey, who lives near where I had parked my truck. When I explained my problem, he picked up his ax to use in chopping a pathway so we could drag the deer.
Bert and I dragged the buck about three-quarters of a mile, reaching a spot to which I could drive the pickup. Although Bert is 79 years old, he is a strong man and about my size. We couldn’t lift the deer high enough to shove him into the truck, so we dragged him to the top of an embankment, backed the truck against it, and then pulled and shoved the heavy body into the truck bed.
I immediately started counting points. I kept losing count and starting over again. That’s when the excitement hit me like a sledgehammer. I’d never seen anything like those antlers.
I took my trophy to a meat-packing house and got it weighed. It scaled 268 pounds, field-dressed. Then I skinned it out and took the head and hide to Gray, Tennessee, about 15 miles from my home. Bob Short has his shop there. He had mounted a white-variant gray squirrel for me, and I knew I could trust him with the rack and head.
I didn’t know the buck would go into the record book until after Bob contacted his neighbor Curtis Williams. Curtis is an official scorer for the Boone and Crockett Club and a hunter who has killed all species of North American big game except jaguar. He told me my buck’s antlers scored 195 6/8* after the required 60-day drying period. An even 195 is needed to put a buck into Boone and Crockett’s record list for nontypical whitetails.
That was when I learned how rare bucks like mine are. For example, only one whitetail killed in 1970 — the last year for which the records have so far been published — was listed in the records. Mine is the only deer with a record-size nontypical rack ever killed in Tennessee.
It’s also probable that he is the heaviest deer ever killed in Tennessee. Roy Anderson, chief of the state’s Game Management Division, says that to his knowledge the heaviest deer previously killed in Tennessee scaled 306 pounds, live weight. According to the formula Bob Short uses in determining live weights from known field-dressed weights, my buck would have tipped the scales at 313 pounds.
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I also learned that through 1970 no Southern state east of the Mississippi River had ever yielded more than one record-size nontypical buck, and that none had ever been killed in North or South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, or Mississippi.
Out of a lifetime of hunting and fishing thrills, none has come close to matching this one for me. I don’t expect another one ever will. I don’t think I could take it.
*Elmer Payne’s buck is actually listed as 196 6/8 inches in the B&C record books, where it’s listed today as the 15th largest nontypical whitetail ever killed in Tennessee.This story, “Hunting in the Land of Boone and Crockett: Buck of My Life,” appeared in the October 1973 issue of Outdoor Life.