Brian Owens’ head was nodding up and down even before he could say yes to a coworker’s invitation to hunt in 2020.
Three-hour drive? No problem.
Brian and Justin Garland work at the Luther Luckett Correctional Complex in La Grange, Kentucky. For them, Whitley County represented proverbial greener pastures.
The guys began scouting the new property in April. A month later, they collected trail camera photographs of a buck with a lot of potential. By August, four of the velvet-clad rack’s uprights looked to be more than a foot long.
The photos abruptly stopped when a black bear moved into the area.
Desperate, Brian and Justin moved their cameras, hoping to discover their Most Wanted’s new routine. One of the new setups finally revealed the deer was about a quarter-mile from its former haunt.
When the September bow season opened, Justin actually got a 42-yard shot at the deer, but his arrow flew underneath it. Brian saw it in late October, but well beyond bow range.
“We hunted hard through the November modern gun season, but never saw the animal,” Brian told Dale Weddle, who’s writing the story for Rack magazine. “I knew of at least six other hunters in the area, so I just assumed one of them had killed it.”
Brian reluctantly shifted his focus to a stud of a 10-pointer that had been seen in the vicinity, his No. 2, until No. 1 reappeared on camera a week before Thanksgiving. The deer had sheared off a point or two from fighting, but its antlers were still breathtaking.
Kentucky’s blackpowder season opened Saturday, Dec. 12, that year. Brian set the alarm for 2 a.m. to give him enough time to drive to the property. Justin was hunting as well, but he drove his own vehicle.
“We had mapped out where we were going to hunt with about 1,000 yards between us. We were excited because Justin had picked up some daytime photos of the big deer.
“I reached my spot about 5:00 and sat down with my back to a tree. I was so tired that I fell asleep,” he said.
A vocal doe caused Brian to open his eyes. Although he couldn’t see her, he pulled out his grunt call and responded “aggressively.” He was pretty sure it was a doe because of the grunt’s tone.
She answered him, too, as did another deer about 10 minutes later. The last grunt was deep and guttural; nothing at all like the first two he’d heard.
There were two deer, as Brian suspected, and he smoked the buck.
“The blast blew leaves up in front of me. At first, I thought I might have hit something on the ground, but the buck fell over after traveling only 25 yards.
“After that, I was just in tears,” he said. “I had put so much time and effort in on the buck that the emotion just flooded out.”
The buck has been rough-scored at 192 inches. Three of the rack’s tines are more than 14 inches long, and another is close to that mark.
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