One of the finest whitetails to fall in Oklahoma in 2016 came off land open to all.
Ross Fenley, a 26-year-old mechanical engineer for International Paper Co., shot it while hunting with friends at the Three Rivers Wildlife Management Area. The hunter from Valliant, Oklahoma, has hunted there almost exclusively since he was 7 or 8 years old.
Last October, Ross and his pals arrived and set up camp on the Friday night before the state's muzzleloader season opened. The plan was to stay nine days.
About 3:30 p.m. on Oct. 27, the Thursday following the opener, Ross threw a climbing stand over his shoulder and hiked about 400 yards in to a place where he'd discovered rubs, scrapes and large tracks three days earlier.
"It was super hot, probably 80 to 85 degrees," he said. "I was sweating like crazy."
His first two hours aloft were uneventful. When Ross finally heard something in the distance, he dug out his tube and gave a couple of grunts. The noise stopped.
Between 10 and 15 minutes later, he heard the sound again and responded with two more grunts. Again, nothing happened.
A quarter-hour later, however, Ross looked in that same direction and saw a buck approaching from 60 yards.
"I didn't know how many points it had," he said. "All I could see was half of one side of its rack. The mass alone told me it was a shooter, and then I saw a kicker."
Ross couldn't take his eyes off the deer, though he had to wait for it to cut the distance by half before he could shoot it.
Standing over it, seeing the whole rack for the first time, the hunter was slack-jawed.
"I couldn't believe what I was seeing. All the points. All the mass," he said. "I was in shock."
Biologists believe the buck was 5 1/2 years old. It managed to avoid other hunters and trail cameras for most of its life. Nobody had seen it before Ross shot it.
The deer's BTR composite score is 213 6/8 inches. The full story behind the hunt will appear in Rack magazine.
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