Rare as a Unicorn
By Buckmasters
Headquartered in Montgomery, Ala., Buckmasters has a perceived reputation as being a Southeastern company. Truth is, if you take a map of the United States and overlap it with where whitetails roam and where Buckmasters fans reside, it’s almost a perfect match — we’re just as popular in the Northeast and Mid-West as we are in the Southeast.
Being in Alabama does impact our personal lives, however. For one thing, it means those of us who work here enjoy exceptionally long deer seasons. Bow season starts in mid-October, and firearms seasons don’t end until mid-February (the exact date varies by a few weeks depending on location), but that’s about four full months of hunting time!
The drawback, of course, is we just don’t see very many giant bucks. A fully mature buck averages in the 130s to 140s score-wise, and most are taken before full maturity. A few years ago I was after a buck we knew was at least 4 years old. He was smart and didn’t show himself in daylight, and when a club member finally got him, the buck was going downhill and had lost about 15 inches from his rack, which had peaked at about 130 the year prior. If you need proof that whitetail rack size is heavily influenced by soil quality, look no farther than the Yellowhammer State.
With that in mind, it’s pretty exciting when we hear of an Alabama buck approaching the legendary 200-inch mark. We don’t have a score yet (we’ll be measuring the rack on Nov. 20), but the buck Hunter Smith shot on Saturday is likely to take the new No. 2 spot all-time for bow bucks in Alabama.
An avid outdoorsman, Hunter makes frequent use of his Wildlife Ecology and Management background in his personal life, but he’s just as surprised as anyone at the size of this buck. Rumor has it that he even checked with nearby high-fence deer operations to see if any of their bucks had escaped — they hadn’t.
We’ll have lots more details on the 20th, when we’ll also be recording a new Big Buck Blueprint podcast with Hunter. Visit the Buckmasters channel on YouTube to see more installments of the Big Buck Blueprint podcast, where the giant-killers tell their tales in their own words.
For now, though, we’re simply enjoying the rare treat of knowing there are a few really big bucks out there ... even if they’re as rare as a unicorn.