Chad McCoy was not surprised when a buck wearing at least 160 inches of antler activated his trail camera's shutter in October 2011. He'd just acquired the property in Ohio, and the photograph merely confirmed his hunch that the piece of ground held potential.
He saw the same buck trailing a doe a month later, but that was the first and last time he eyeballed it that year. Even so, he nicknamed it King.
Chad and his brother, Lear, retrieved several nighttime photographs of King in 2012, but neither saw him on the hoof. The images revealed that he'd grown considerably.
Last season, King began mugging for the camera the first week of October. His rack, by then, was enormous. The brothers wound up getting three consecutive daytime photos of him, and that was all Chad needed to start hunting.
Immediately.
The same afternoon Lear told Chad about the new photos, the siblings climbed into a double stand. Chad carried his bow, and Lear, who had already punched his tag with another monstrous whitetail, was armed with a video camera.
Just over an hour after they settled in, the guys spotted a deer approaching from their left. Soon after the deer exited the cedar thicket and wandered into the oak flat, downwind of his audience, the brothers recognized him.
Ten tense minutes later, when King was within 20 yards, Chad launched an arrow, and the giant went to ground within 80 yards of the gawking McCoys.
Rob Meade's story about the kingslayer will appear in Rack magazine, the month following his tale about Lear's buck, which tallied within 1/8 inch of his brother's.
Chad's whitetail has a BTR composite score of 196 6/8.