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Brandon Alday Buck
By Mike Handley
Brandon Alday's 4-year-old son, Hayes, nearly choked him when the yelling commenced. The boy was getting a free ride on his father's shoulders when Brandon’s flashlight beam fell across the buck he was convinced he’d either missed or maimed.
"I started screaming like a little girl, which scared my son half to death," Brandon laughs. "H... READ MORE
Pat Bates Buck
By Mike Handley
Pheromones and estrous doe scents might be akin to Cupid’s arrow, but whatever Pat Bates pours on bushes is more like Thor’s hammer.
One whiff of the concoction will turn bucks into white-eyed defoliators, or, if they’re big and stupid enough to do battle with flora in front of Pat, into wall art.
The retired firefighter from Al... READ MORE
Andrew French Buck
By Allen "Horntagger" Morris
"Wait a minute," Brian Bard stopped, his face a rainbow of emotion. "You're not going to believe this … My bow's back in the truck!"
Brian and Andrew French were so preoccupied by thoughts of what their afternoon hunt would bring that neither thought it odd - at least at first - that Brian wasn't carrying his bow. He was carrying his huntin... READ MORE
Kevin Fitch Buck
By Ed Waite
It was as if the ground opened up and swallowed Kevin Fitch’s buck. One minute, it was on the receiving end of a shotgun slug (he hoped). The next, it was gone.
Not fall-down-dead gone. Not running-with-the-wind-and-leaving-a-blood-trail gone.
Just gone, leaving the hunter from Norwalk, Ohio, with Rodney Dangerfield eyes and a mouth full of... READ MORE
Johnny King Buck
By Mike Handley
The two men approached the downed buck cautiously, from different sides. Johnny King’s bullets had dropped the enormous whitetail, but Brad Heisz, who’d answered his cousin’s desperate call for help, had obligingly administered the coup de grace. Brad reached it first, while Johnny was circling around in front. He knelt, grasped t... READ MORE
Ryan Cox Buck
By Mike Handley
Neither nature’s call nor a need for fuel caused Ryan Cox to suddenly veer off the highway and pull into the nearest gas station on Oct. 16. The 18-year-old from Eagleville, Mo., was on his way back to Columbia from St. Louis, where he’d gone to look at a truck for sale, when his brother, Kris, sent him a photograph via cell phone. The ... READ MORE
Mike Beatty Buck
By Dan Armitage
Fumbling nervously in the darkness for one of his distinctive white-fletched arrows, Mike Beatty had made one of the toughest decisions of his life: to temporarily abandon the search for the monstrous whitetail he'd shot at dusk. Still not convinced that he'd chosen correctly, the Ohio bowhunter nocked the projectile on the barbed wire fence to mar... READ MORE
Stuart Everett Buck
By Rusty Johnson
Stuart Everett almost quit deer in 2014. After three seasons of pursuing a photogenic whitetail with a rack that seemed to double in points each year, he got an eyeblink of an opportunity and never fired a shot. The episode left him keenly aware of how much money he'd spent and how many hours he'd devoted to be able to touch those antlers. His obse... READ MORE