Rack Magazine

This buck’s nose saved its bacon the first time. An errant shot ensured only a headache the next.

Ol’ Two Drop came up out of the creek bed and into the food plot. Tim Hatton hadn’t recognized the distinctive deer before then, even though he’d been watching it mangle a bush on the other side of the creek for nearly half an hour.

Tim was clutching his bow inside a shooting house. He couldn’t twist around to shoot to the side, so he had to wait until the buck was 35 yards straight ahead and framed in the front window.

The deer walked slowly and purposefully, broadside to Tim in the dwindling light.

It was two steps short of becoming a very large kabob when, all of a sudden, the giant buck winded the hunter, snorted, and took off running. It sped across the bottom and into a thicket, took about four more jumps, ducked its massive rack, and then disappeared through a wall of brush.

Tim just shook his head as he let down his bow. A hunter doesn’t get many chances at a buck like that, and he knew it.

Tim owns and farms about 60 acres in Powell County, Kentucky. His longtime friend, Franklin Johnson, owns the neighboring 150 acres. The two men hunt each other’s property as if it were one big block.

They raise cattle together, along with corn and soybeans. And when the eastern Kentucky hardwoods’ leaves lose their green in the fall, the men fixate on deer.

They first noticed the drop-tined buck a couple of years ago. Its antlers were very tall, and several tines were split. But the characteristic that earned its nickname was the double drop tines: one long, the other short.

After the shifting breeze robbed Tim of his opportunity to take the big deer with a bow, the two hunters studied the trail camera photographs they’d collected of the deer. They agreed it was still a young buck, and decided not to shoot it during the upcoming gun season. They wanted to see how much more it might grow.

True to his word, Franklin passed up the big whitetail on a couple of occasions.

When Ol’ Two Drop mugged for their trail cams the following year, Tim and Franklin were happy they’d given him another year to grow. He was impressive the previous year, but even more so now.

The guys were astounded that the drop tines had switched sides. Or at least the longer one was now short, and the shorter was now long.

Franklin had two or three encounters with the buck during bow season, but the deer never came close enough for him to shoot it. Neither he nor Tim had any qualms about hunting it with a rifle, if it wouldn’t come within bow range.

“When gun season came in, I decided to hunt out of a ladder stand that first Saturday,” Tim said. “The stand was 24 feet high among hardwoods.

“The food plot where I had almost gotten a shot at Ol’ Two Drop with my bow the year before was in the bottom below me. There was a thicket between the stand in the hardwoods and the food plot.

“I hunted hard that first weekend and let a lot of small bucks walk. There was no sign of the big one,” he said.

“On Monday morning, I decided to move to another stand down in the thicket. It was a good morning. Deer were moving. By 8:00, I had seen seven or eight does and five small bucks.

“That’s when I looked up into the hardwoods and saw Ol’ Two Drop between 200 and 250 yards away. He was easy to identify because he was the only deer we had on the place with such a high rack.

“I waited until he got a little closer. When he stopped, his head and neck were in the open, so I aimed for his neck and shot,” Tim continued.

“He ran off without showing any sign of being hit. When I checked the area where he had been standing, there was no blood,” he said.

Not only was Tim convinced he’d missed, but he also figured he’d never see the deer again that season.

“When I got up Tuesday morning, it was raining lightly. We have a covered shooting house about 40 yards from where I saw the buck the previous day. Because I knew I could keep dry there, I went with the idea of staying all day,” Tim said.

“About 8:00, I saw two does run out of the thicket. A few seconds later, Ol’ Two Drop burst out of there on the heels of another. Then a fourth doe appeared. Deer were running everywhere.

“The big buck stopped right underneath the distant ladder stand. The doe he had been chasing turned like she was going to go back into the thicket. He turned, ran, and then stopped in an opening,” Tim continued.

“He was about 90 yards from my shooting house. I raised my .30-06, found the deer in the scope, squeezed the trigger, and he went down,” he said. “Afterward, I texted Franklin to let him know I had finally killed Ol’ Two Drop.”

When Tim went over and lifted the buck’s head to admire the rack, he discovered a chunk of antler missing about 3 inches up from the left base. His bullet from the previous morning had almost sheared off that side.

This article was published in the October 2016 edition of Rack Magazine. Subscribe today to have Rack Magazine delivered to your home.

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