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It was mid-afternoon on Oct. 19 when Cameron Parham left his vehicle and walked alone to a ladder stand on a 55-acre property south of Richmond, Virginia. The stand was located in an old food plot near some mature white oaks that were raining acorns.
Carrying the bow that his father used before he passed away earlier this year, Parham took a new route into the stand of oak trees. It was the same place where he’d gotten trail camera photos of a big non-typical buck — one he’d nicknamed “Double Deuce” because of the double main beams on its left side.
“There was a change in wind direction, so I walked a different way to my stand, and when I was walking in, I jumped a big-bodied buck in some thick cover,” Parham tells Outdoor Life. “I thought it was Double Deuce, but I didn’t get a good look at his rack when he ran.”
The 23-year-old hunter jumped four more does when he got to his stand around 4:15 p.m. He was discouraged, thinking he’d already bumped his target buck, and he pulled out his Bible after settling into the stand. Roughly an hour later, while engrossed in Proverbs, Parham heard a stick snap. He looked up and saw a good 8-point 50 yards away. The buck was feeding on acorns and heading toward his stand.
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After 10 minutes of watching the buck, Parham was considering taking the 8-point instead of waiting for Double Deuce. He was getting ready to draw when he heard another stick break, and he turned to see the big non-typical walking his direction.
“He followed the same path that the 8-pointer had,” Parham says. “Neither buck was spooky and Double Deuce stayed right on the trail of that 8-pointer. He eventually stepped behind a holly bush while the 8-pointer looked away from me.”
With its head to the ground, the buck presented Parham with a slightly quartering-to shot at 16 yards. Parham drew the Mathew’s bow that had belonged to his dad. He aimed and released, and his arrow hit the buck just behind its shoulder.
It was just after 6:30 p.m. and still light out when Parham climbed down out of his stand. He called his brother Wade and then found his arrow. The broadhead had passed through the buck, and Parham saw blood and guts on the arrow. He also found a short blood trail that stopped suddenly.
“[The buck] made a big back legs kick which is always a good sign. But when he ran away, he acted like nothing was wrong,” Parham says. “When I saw intestines, I started thinking that maybe I hadn’t made such a good shot, and I felt sick.”
After meeting his brother back at his vehicle and hearing about what might’ve been a poor hit on the buck, Wade had an idea. He called his friend Jut Updyke, a licensed drone pilot and videographer, who was already in the area and had just helped another hunter find a lost deer. (Although the use of drones for deer recovery remains controversial or illegal in many places, it is legal in Virginia and several other states. Virginia hunting regulations specify that drones can only be used to recover game on private land, and that you can’t hunt a piece of property on the same calendar day you fly a drone there.)
“I was just so concerned about maybe losing Double Deuce that calling Jut in just made sense.” Parham says. “I didn’t want to walk up on a wounded buck and jump him.”
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He says Updyke got to the property and it only took him 10 minutes to find the buck after sending up his drone, which was outfitted with thermal imaging equipment and cameras.
“[Jut] only had it up for 10 minutes or so, and he spotted Double Deuce curled up in the woods,” Parham says. “The buck was dead. He’d only traveled 65 yards from where I’d shot him.”
After loading the roughly 200-pound buck into Parham’s vehicle, they counted 20 points on the non-typical rack. The rack had a 19 5/8-inch spread and an official Buckmasters score of 202 4/8 using the BTR scoring system, according to BTR scorer Anders Blixt. Parham says Blixt told him the buck will be among the top five Virginia bucks ever taken with a bow in the BTR book.
Parham says that with his dad’s passing earlier this year, hunting season has been especially tough on him and his family. His dad had taught him everything he knows about hunting, and he says it was a powerful thing to be able to use his dad’s old bow to arrow the buck.
“My dad is the one who inspired all of us to love this lifestyle. It hurt my heart to not be able to call him first and celebrate it with him,” Parham says. “But I know he was with me on this hunt. I was using his bow and hunting from one of his favorite stands.”
