The moment Tony Losey looked out of his popup blind's window and saw something other than the raindrops he'd been watching all morning, he forgot he was holding a bag of pistachios. Or maybe he just lost his grip.
One moment, the Belleville, Mich., hunter was sitting in his dry dome, enjoying his snack. The next, nuts were flying everywhere while he stared in disbelief at the enormous buck that had wafted out of the nearby sea of poplars.
Not that he really needed to, since he was hunting with a shotgun that day, but Tony put his rangefinder on the deer anyway. It was all he could do to hold the unit steady, and he doesn't even remember what distance was displayed.
He was much more calm when he shot a 12-pointer a week earlier, the day Michigan's 2013 firearms season opened.
Tony was hunting a neighbor's land, specifically an old apple orchard. Their pact was that he could hunt as long as he shared some venison and waylaid any coyotes that crossed his path.
He had no idea a buck of this magnitude might show.
Tony was so afflicted by buck fever that it's a wonder he remembered to poke his shotgun barrel out the window before squeezing the trigger.
He thought he missed, too, until the buck stopped running and fell over dead.
Tony didn't bother to unzip the door and exit the traditional way. He upended the blind, ran over to the deer, and then called the landowner.
He was still shaking when the man arrived.
Darren Warner is writing the story for Rack magazine. The Losey Buck's BTR composite score is 204 4/8.