8 1/2-Year-Old Monarch Falls to Hard Work and a Plan
By Mark Melotik
Can you be too careful when hunting an old, top-end whitetail that has eluded you for several years? Kentucky’s Jeff Deberry, 57, knew exactly the elusive skills of the outsized whitetail he was hunting when his ultra-cautious plan to waylay the brute finally came together last Nov. 11 — opening day of Kentucky’s 2023 rifle season.
And what a plan it was. It needed to be something special: As the years passed by, Deberry, a lifelong hunter, realized he was dealing with a very unusual deer, a buck with a very small, very specific home range.
Deberry first encountered the big Irregular back in 2019 as he snuck into a favorite 100-acre private parcel on which he had permission — slowly still-hunting into the timber. The big deer suddenly sprang up ahead of him as he worked the edge of a deep ravine clogged with cedars and briars along the edge of an isolated pond.
“After I’d been hunting him for about three years, I jumped him right there in that same area two years in a row, a couple times each year,” Deberry recalled. “He stayed there at the bottom of that ravine near that pond, and I’d only jump him there if I stalked slowly in there on foot. If I drove in there with a side-by-side, or my truck, I’m sure he could hear that gravel crunching under the tires, and I would never see him.”
Because the area was so thick with briars and cedars, Deberry knew getting a good shot at the fleeing buck from the ground was nearly impossible. He hatched a plan to access the area from the opposite side and set a treestand very near the buck’s bedroom.
The plan required getting permission to cross the adjacent landowner’s parcel. With that permission secured in 2022, Deberry hauled in a large ladder stand, setting it in the only tree that would hold it, not far from the property line. Then it was a matter of waiting for the right wind.
“When I set that stand I did not cut one shooting lane, did not touch one tree, branch or anything,” Deberry said. “I knew I had to be extra careful around that deer.”
Deberry got the right wind to hunt the stand just one day during the 2022 season and saw nothing. The season ended with just one sighting of the buck — he will never forget jumping the deer that fall in its favorite area and watching it literally crawl away from him on its knees under the thick briar tangles.
A year later, on Nov. 11, 2023, Deberry chose to pass on hunting opening morning because he felt it was too hot. But as early afternoon arrived, a strong, perfect wind for the ladder stand inspired him to make the long hike.
“I had to walk the long way around and go under two fences, and it took me about an hour and a half to get back there,” he recalled, explaining that he took about a 10-minute rest halfway to the stand due to the heat.
After about 45 minutes on stand, Deberry glimpsed a sapling dancing back and forth in the thick tangle in front of him — a buck making a rub! But was it the right buck?
“About 10 minutes after that, he came my way and I could see bits and pieces of him,” he said. “He looked like a horse, his body was so huge. It took about 30 minutes for him to move over to some cedar trees, but I could hardly see him. He stopped right in front of me for seven or eight minutes. He knew something wasn’t right, but the wind was blowing so hard from him to me that he couldn’t smell me.”
After another 15 minutes, the buck had moved to about 50 yards, quartering away, and Deberry took the shot with his trusty Remington 7400 autoloader chambered in .30-06. At the shot, the buck kicked and took off running, but soon throttled down and began walking away.
“I sat there for about 30 minutes, and then got down and went over to where he was standing. There was a wad of hair, but not a bit of blood. I went about 125 yards, finding no blood and was backtracking when I suddenly ran into him piled up. The bullet must have exploded inside of him, because it didn’t come out.”
As Deberry picked up the antlers, he was amazed.
“Because I never set any trail cameras for him, and because I only saw him running away from me, I never really got a good look at what he was,” Deberry said. “I knew he was special, but I didn’t know how special until I was holding his rack in my hands.”
To add to the buck’s mystique, Deberry had the deer aged at 8 1/2 years old.
With 30 scorable points and more than 115 inches of irregular points, the unique Bluegrass State buck scores 197 3/8 in BTR’s Centerfire Rifle Irregular category.