Indiana hunter Brad Thurman was sure the magic of the day was about to pull a disappearing act...

The bedded buck flicked an ear and lifted its chin a couple of times as if nodding, checking for scent. Brad's belly-crawling through the meadow ceased, leaving him in an awkward position. He let his eyes roll right to see what had caught the buck's attention.

Brad had already crawled about 100 yards, low as a lioness in the grass, using one pressed-down furrow left by an ATV. Since daybreak, he'd watched the buck, first chasing and then bedding with a doe about 200 yards from his treestand.
Three hours later, with the deer lying in the same place and the wind perfect, Brad had decided to make a move.

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With the optimism and excitement of everyone who uses a trail camera for scouting, Patrick Cady shuffled through photos. Does, does, whoa! A monster buck was casing his neighborhood!

"Based on what the camera told me, I went out on a Sunday morning, Oct. 3, hung a stand and trimmed shooting lanes," Patrick said. "And then as I was leaving, I met a neighbor who told me about a big deer that was shot on opening day, about 250 yards south of that property.

"It had been raining and cold on opening day, and there was still a lot of standing corn," he continued. "I'd seen a parked truck and thought the guy was wasting his time, but that's who shot the big buck. I went back that afternoon and pulled the stand."

The Wellman, Iowa, bowhunter was understandably disappointed. Time is precious, considering the countless hours he devotes to his own construction business and his duties coaching soccer, baseball and wresting teams. The 42-year-old outdoorsman treasures his time in the woods. And he knew that with the big buck gone, he wouldn't feel the same about the 2004 archery season.

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My trip to Illinois last year got off to a rough start.

A couple of weeks before my brother, Derek, and I left, I studied topo maps to get a feel for the property we'd be hunting -- land that our outfitter had leased. When we arrived, our host took us to the tract, and Derek and I spent two hours scouting and hanging stands for the afternoon hunt.

On our way back to the vehicle, we saw another truck barreling down the dirt road toward us. When it came to an abrupt stop, out jumped a little loud-mouthed guy from Pennsylvania, mad as a pit bull because we were on HIS property!
Turns out, he had bought the place the afternoon before we got there. 

Duly and overly chastised, my brother and I went back and retrieved our stands. The outfitter wound up taking us to a place we'd never hunted, although I'd seen a dandy buck chasing a doe in the middle of the road about a half-mile from there the previous year.

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Jody Spiers had endured a tough week behind the wheel of his logging truck. By Friday’s end, he’d put in 70 hours, and he was exhausted. He’d planned to sleep in until at least 7 a.m. that Saturday, Nov. 19, before hunting his parents’ land. With barely a week remaining in Maine’s 2005 rifle season, he was hoping to get a good deer for the family freezer.

But his cousin, Rodney Ouellette, had different plans.

At 5:30 a.m., Jody was awakened by his cousin, who excitedly told him that he had found the “perfect spot” to hunt that day.

Because Jody had moved to Saint Francis from Stacyville in July, he wasn’t familiar with the area. He trusted Rodney’s judgment completely. His cousin knew there was a big buck in a place he’d been scouting, and he was gung ho to shoot it. So after a hearty breakfast, the men were on their way.

There are many logging roads in the deep woods of the Allagash region. Where some of these roads converge, there are natural deer trails. The spot that Rodney had found was a big triangular piece of ground with deer tracks funneled into a ravine alongside a brook with thick cover and clear-cuts around all sides. It was a cold, crisp morning with a light breeze and a ground cover of about 6 inches of snow.

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After Labor Day, when most hunters focus on scouting and finding the perfect places for intercepting deer, Denny Kommes turns his attention to another kind of harvesting. For about 14 hours a day, he works on a crew combining corn and bean fields.

In addition to helping put vegetables on tables across America, the Exira, Iowa, hunter can also “bring home the bacon,” or in this case, venison. His work schedule means that he only gets to hunt one weekend a year. But in 2004, Denny made the most of his time in the field, knocking down a slammer that he’ll remember for all the weekends — and weekdays — of his life.

“We may chase out some deer while combining, but doing that kind of work doesn’t allow any time for scouting and not much time for hunting,” he said. “We start in September, and, usually, with 45 farms or so to do, we’re working through November, sometimes as many as 100 hours a week.”

Denny runs a piece of equipment called the auger wagon, which catches the harvest from the combining equipment and transfers it to trucks. In addition to running the wagon, he also tends to any mechanical problems.

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By Mike Handley

Photo: Sixteen-year-old Cameron Bunting of Deville, La., gained a sixth notch in his bowhunting belt last November. He waited six days for the 10-minute window to shut out this 15-pointer's lights.

Ordinarily, anyone who has traveled across four states to climb a tree where bruiser bucks roam would rise with the roosters. But that wasn’t the case when 16-year-old Cameron Bunting crawled out of the sack on Nov. 9, six days into his fall vacation.

Cameron’s enthusiasm for rising before dawn was definitely waning. The hunting party — which included his dad, Greg, cousin Doug Bell and another guy, Reggie Yancy — was one day away from calling it quits and heading the 17 hours back home to Louisiana. Almost everyone else had drawn blood, and the kid, understandably, was ready to write off the 2006 season.

That he had a stomach ache that day was plenty enough reason to hang around camp for a few extra hours.

The trip to Ohio is an annual pilgrimage for the Buntings, who usually are accompanied by two or three others. They go to a cabin in Pike County, near the public ground they’ve come to know very well. As soon as they hit town, there’s always a trip to Wal-Mart for over-the-counter licenses.

Cameron slept in that Thursday morning. His one and only vigil wouldn’t begin until much later in the day, and he was definitely looking forward to a change of scenery, eager to take his dad’s advice and hunt an area five minutes away that always seemed to hold a few does.

Around 4 p.m., the well rested hunter climbed off his ATV and began the 80-yard hike from the gravel road to his stand. It was three hours later than his usual afternoon starting time.

Greg had gone so far as to suggest a particular tree, but Cameron didn’t like it when he got an up-close look at things. He wound up going 80 yards deeper into the open hardwoods, until he stumbled across a fresh scrape.

A buck had left a ripe calling card, and Cameron decided to answer it.

As soon as he was about 35 to 40 feet high in an oak, he flipped his doe-in-a-can twice and grunted. Almost immediately, he heard a deer approaching. Moments later, the kid zeroed in on its antlers.

“I didn’t think it was all THAT big,” he admitted. “I thought that it was just a nice 8-pointer.”

When the “nice” animal was within 40 yards less than five minutes later, Cameron bleated again. When the buck stopped, the kid’s bow hummed.

The deer ran about 50 yards after the thwack, and then its right front leg folded inward, sending it sprawling. Woozy, but still full of adrenaline, the buck managed to rise again and covered another 50 yards before calmly lying down and taking its last breath.

Cameron didn’t realize until he was standing over the fallen whitetail that it was far bigger than the bragging-sized bucks the others had taken during the week. Instead of eight points, it wore 15 (eight on the right side alone).

The 10-minute hunt was almost surreal, especially considering that Cameron had taken only one buck and a few does in the eight seasons leading up to that day.

BTR Score: 162 2/8

–Mike Handley

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"Thanks, old man."

I wasn't talking to my father, but to the gray-muzzled buck that I had just harvested. As I knelt next to the massive and remarkable animal, I couldn't believe that my quest for it had ended.

Two years earlier, I'd noticed some wooden fence posts that were almost rubbed in two. I knew that only a hoss could do that much damage to them. During the next several weeks, however, I never saw a deer big enough to have reduced a fence post to a toothpick.

The next season, I noticed fresh rubs along the same fence line. From the looks of it, they'd been visited frequently. Once again, the excitement came back to me.

During the last weekend of the 2004 hunting season, I was out doing some chores, checking the fence and such with my father, Lee, and our good friend, Mike. We called ourselves the three amigos, jokingly, all dressed to match in our blaze orange, in case we stumbled across a good buck.

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