Bowhunting an Internet Legend
By Mark Melotik
One of the first rules of hunting mature bucks? Hunt where they live. That was the thinking of Arkansas resident Josh Hogue when he began hunting a stretch of Arkansas County public land four years ago, on the advice of some veteran local hunters who’d traveled there regularly and come back packing some impressive trophies.
Hogue, 27, is a lifelong hunter who’s already bagged more than 100 deer, including an impressive 153-inch 13-pointer taken back in 2017. But Hogue’s decision to travel some two hours from home to hunt Arkansas County would pay off with a truly outsized deer in December of 2022, a brute many would consider a buck of a lifetime.
Things began heating up early that fall when Hogue and his buddy Gauge heard about a big deer rumored to be haunting one of their favorite Arkansas County public spots. Then Gauge bowhunted the area solo in October and caught a brief glimpse of a buck he believed could be the local legend in question.
Both Josh and Gauge would return to bowhunt the area during Thanksgiving week 2022, and by this time trail camera photos of the giant had been circulating among Arkansas whitetail hunters for weeks. This, despite trail cameras being illegal in the public area where Gauge had his encounter.
“At this point, just about everybody had heard about the deer, and God knows how many people were in there running trail cameras, even though you’re not supposed to,” Hogue said. “Apparently whoever took them couldn’t keep a secret, because those photos were getting sent around.”
Based on Gauge’s earlier encounter, the pair hatched a plan to hunt the giant, again accessing the area along a river via boat as Gauge had done earlier. On that hunt’s next-to-last day, Gauge once again saw the huge deer as it chased away a much smaller buck that had been dogging does near his stand. Again, he couldn’t get a shot.
The next day, Josh was angling back through the woods to pick up Gauge for their hike back to the boat when Josh found an area that screamed HOTSPOT! It was a place where several trails and habitat edges converged, and Josh was so excited he brought Gauge back to see it.
Gauge hunted the spot, again solo, the next weekend, but pouring rain soured that hunt, which produced no sightings of the monster. The next weekend, Gauge was unable to hunt but urged Josh to get back in there and hunt the very same tree.
The night of Dec. 15, Josh was back and slept in his truck at the boat ramp. After the boat ride and long hike in hip boots into the spot, he was on stand just 15 minutes when caught a glimpse of a buck about 130 yards out. At about 8 a.m., Josh looked up to see another buck emerge, a buck that steadily made its way toward him to within 15 yards. When it turned broadside, Josh, now at full draw, gave a barely audible mouth bleat to stop it.
“As soon as I did that, he stopped and locked up,” Josh recalled. “As the arrow hit him, I pretty much almost jumped out of the tree. I had my bow on the bow rope about the time he fell down. I have a video of myself walking up to him, and I threw up when I was still like 20 yards away from him. I was just in such disbelief.”
When he finally made it all the way to the buck, Josh could see it was indeed the same deer he had seen in the trail camera photos circulating on the Internet.
“Me and my buddy had a joke, and when I told him, he said, ‘You just killed the most famous deer in Arkansas.’”