How is it that many graying turkey hunters might not be able to hear his or her spouse ask a question from the other end of the sofa, but they can still pinpoint a gobble from 100 yards?
One answer is sound frequency, when the rise and fall of everyday speech can result in the dropping of consonants, when a significant other or coworker sounds like they’re speaking Hawaiian. Another reason is we don’t care what that longbeard is saying; just that he’s saying something.
The same applies to deer hunters. Hearing a buck grunt or two whitetails fighting is not the same as understanding what they’re saying.
Eighty-year-old Glenn Luffman is living proof that a hearing-impaired man can still be dialed-in to the antler-clashing frequency. The retired barge deckhand from Woodlawn, Tennessee, heard the telltale clicks last fall just minutes before shooting the biggest buck of his seven-decade-long hunting career.
Glenn shot the deer off a friend’s 160 acres in nearby Stewart County. His son, Brad, maintains the property in exchange for hunting rights.
On Nov. 18, two weeks into the Volunteer State’s muzzleloader season, father and son arrived at the place at 1:30 in the afternoon. While the elder Luffman walked to a nearby creek – doe central – and parked himself in front of a dirt pile, Brad hiked a half-mile farther.
“My tactic was simple enough: Hunt where the does are to increase the chances of seeing bucks chasing them,” Glenn told Gita Smith, who’s writing the story for Rack magazine. The rut was at its peak there.
At the top of their Most Wanted list was a buck their camera had photographed only once during bow season. Glenn said he could count at least 16 points, and he suspected there were more.
Soon into his hunt, Glenn heard the unmistakable sound of bucks fighting, and he eventually saw them as they came closer. When the larger of the two was only 80 yards away, it ceased posturing began chasing a doe.
The deer was running full out when Glenn shot.
“The bullet went midway up the ribcage, behind its lungs,” he said. “The buck ran 30 yards, reared up, fell backwards, and its rack hit dirt. It had two nicks in its left side, probably from that fight,” he said.
With a Buckmasters score of 192 1/8 inches, Glenn’s 23-pointer is the sixth-largest, blackpowder-felled Irregular ever recorded from Tennessee. You can read the rest of his story in an upcoming issue of Rack.
– Photo courtesy Brad Luffman
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