When Mitchell Oney answered his cell phone on the evening of Kentucky's 2012 rifle opener, he was probably relieved that his wife Michelle, who was hunting nearby, hadn't somehow been injured.
He still swallowed hard after she spoke.
"I've got your deer. Do I shoot him?" she asked.
Mitchell had been obsessed with this buck for two years, and there was no mistaking it among trail camera images because of its 30-plus-inch-long main beams, one of them sloping downward. Husband and wife were hunting between 300 and 400 yards apart, on the same ridge, and she was looking at the buck.
"Yes," he stammered, and the report of her rifle echoed moments later.
Work and chores kept them out of the woods that morning. And they might not have gone on the afternoon of Nov. 10 had Michelle not badgered him into stopping a task so they could go to the woods.
The big whitetail with the unmistakable rack showed up in front of her just past 5:00. After checking with Mitch, she waited for the buck to step into an opening, and then shot it.
Mitchell called her immediately to ask if she'd connected.
"'Yes,' I said, before hanging up," she told Dale Weddle, who's writing the story for Rack magazine. "I was sitting there trying to calm down and to give the deer some time. The next thing I know: Mitch is riding up on the four-wheeler, I'm trying to wave him off, and the buck got up and ran."
An hour and a half later, the Oneys and two friends found it by flashlight.
The Elliott County 14-pointer has a BTR composite score of 184 1/8 inches, as a Typical.
Braggin’ Board
Send your 2014 big buck photos to mhandley@buckmasters.com. Please include hunter’s name, where the animal was hunted, and its score (if known). Remember: The BTR has no drying period.