Hunting Naked, Unintentionally
By Mike Handley
While some people might have nightmares about addressing a full classroom or coworkers while butt-naked, Tony Brown is more apt to dream about facing a distant buck without a grunt call in his possession. Only Tony’s dream actually happened last season.
While eyeballing what very well could’ve been the biggest whitetail known to exist on his brother’s property, his hand frantically patted and squeezed every pocket in search of the grunt call that has become a staple in his deer hunting arsenal. Finally realizing he must have left the device in another stand, Tony could only watch the animal fade into the distance.
Two hours later, however, he forgot all about the miscue.
Fourteen seasons earlier, after years of finding and then losing places to hunt deer close to home, Tony and his younger brother, Brian, began venturing beyond North Carolina’s borders. They traveled to Ohio, Indiana and Missouri.
“You can’t find land any more where we live, so we started looking elsewhere,” said the 55-year-old from Wilkesboro. “We decided to look for small-time outfitters, someplace we could go and just have fun for a week.”
During one trip, they met some other hunters at a restaurant in Cadiz, Kentucky, and then hooked up with a local who had some land. They hunted with him until someone overbid him for a lease, and then Brian decided to buy his own land in the Bluegrass State.
Last April, he purchased a 46-acre tract in northeastern Kentucky, a five-hour drive from their homes in North Carolina. The brothers also bought a tractor and began creating food plots, making as many as 25 trips over the summer to sculpt their home-away-from-home into a deer paradise.
They also set up six or eight trail cameras to photograph the resident whitetails, and they erected several blinds.
Three others joined the Browns for opening weekend of the rifle season. They stayed in motel rooms across the river in Ohio, 15 minutes from the land they were hunting.
Four days in, Brian told Tony to sit in his stand on Wednesday, since he had to drive back to coach his middle school wrestling team’s match. The biggest buck their cameras had identified, a 10-pointer that might’ve been packing 150 inches, had been photographed there.
Tony declined the offer, at first, but that’s where he wound up going before sunrise. Brian would be reclaiming the spot on Thursday.
About 8:00 on Nov. 13, Tony saw what might have been the beefy 5x5 at a distance. Instinctively, he reached for his grunt call, only to discover he didn’t have it. He’d left it and his doe bleat in his own stand.
“I was heartbroken,” he said. “I thought, Oh, no. I’ve got nothing.”
An hour and 45 minutes later, a doe and a yearling came through and began feeding. The smaller of the two was nipping briars within 10 yards of Tony’s blind.
At 10:15, Tony heard a stick break to his left and glanced over to see a monstrous buck 40 yards distant, heading uphill toward the farthest doe. He wasted little time poking his rifle barrel out of the nearest opening, taking extra care because he didn’t want the little deer in front of him to spot the movement and blow a warning.
The buck stopped before walking into the firing lane, however, and then chose an alternate path, forcing Tony to pull in his barrel and choose another window.
After Tony’s rifle barked, the buck ran about 50 yards into a thicket and stopped. There was time for a followup shot, but the man accustomed to supervising chicken truck drivers was a granite-like block of indecision, as if he’d paid the price for gazing at Medusa.
“I was just shell-shocked, I guess,” he said. “I couldn’t shoot again. Thankfully, the deer disappeared a minute later. I figured it had to have fallen because I didn’t see it run off.”
His buddy, Leroy, heard the shot and sent a text message to Brian even before touching base with Tony.
Later, when Leroy joined Tony beside the downed buck, he was in no state to push any buttons on his phone.
“Leroy’s a big fella; 6-foot, 5 or 6 inches, and about 360 pounds. He fell on his knees, and I could see tears as he said, ‘Oh … my … god. He was so excited. He said, ‘You don’t even know what you’ve done. This deer here will go 200 inches!’”
Leroy was right on the money, too. When Wayne Cox later measured the rack for Buckmasters, the tally was an even 200. The 18-point rack — a mainframe 7x6 with five irregular points — fell into the record book’s Semi-Irregular category.
“We had no pictures of this deer,” Tony said. “We had no idea it existed. The only time it walked in front of our cameras was on the morning I shot it.
“Every time we ran into the neighbors, they’d ask if we’d seen any big ones, and all we could say was maybe a 10-pointer that might be a 150. They never mentioned the big one until AFTER I shot it,” he added.
“Turns out, one of the locals had been hunting that deer for three years. That means it was a shooter for three seasons, which is why we figure it had to be about 6 years old. The man even shared a video clip and trail camera photos of it.
“I can’t tell you how glad I am that I didn’t have my grunt call with me that morning,” he continued. “If I’d had it, I might never have seen this buck.”
Tony could be right. He’s employed grunt calls successfully for years, even luring one mature buck from 300 to 30 yards on a dead run. His son shot that one.
Since North Carolina regulations prevent the transport of raw deer heads across the state line, Tony left the cape with a Kentucky taxidermist. He boned out the rest of the carcass in order to carry home his venison.