Shannon Alvis shot one of the largest public land bucks ever recorded from Alabama on the last day of the Black Warrior Wildlife Management Area's three-day, mid-December rifle hunt.
He can thank a buddy for telling him about the hunt, his intuition for choosing the perfect place to hang a stand, and a doe for leading the giant whitetail to slaughter.
The state-run WMA lies within the 180,000-acre Bankhead National Forest. It's split into two zones, A and B, and spans about half of the federal tract. Shannon was hunting Zone A on the Lawrence County side.
The 42-year-old hunter now living in Bremen, Alabama, still wonders if he dreamed the whole thing.
When he moved back to Cullman County from Bibb, he resumed bowhunting the Black Warrior's Zone B, which is 70 miles from his front door. A friend convinced him to participate in the A side's Dec. 8-10 rifle hunt.
"He told me how to get to one place, and I went looking for it on Thursday. That was my first time to go in there," Shannon said. "While looking for it, I found a natural funnel with lots of trails and big buck sign."
Shannon might've left his climber in the truck on Saturday morning, Dec. 10, if his buddy hadn't advised against it. He's glad he listened.
"If I had been hunting from the ground, I never would've seen this deer," he said.
Shannon hiked almost 2 miles to reach his bucky place, and he was aloft before dawn. His original plan was to hold out for a stud, but as the morning wore on, the cold began seeping through his clothing.
He might've been freezing, but his resolve melted. He decided to shoot the first deer with antlers to walk within range.
"This one just happened to be the first racked buck I saw," he said.
The buck was dogging a doe, barely 60 yards away, when Shannon squeezed the trigger.
Even with a deer cart and a couple of extra backs – strangers he met at the parking area – it took two hours to wheel the antlered payload across the rough and hilly terrain.
The buck caused quite a stir at the check-in station. When the atmosphere calmed, game biologists examined the deer and proclaimed it to be 8 1/2 years old.
Shannon's step-dad, a taxidermist, rough-scored the buck the next morning and came up with 203 inches. He wasn't far off the mark. The deer's BTR composite score is 199 2/8 inches.
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Wide Load: Karen Little / BTR Composite Score: 215 inches.