Breaking a sweat to escape well beaten paths puts this Oklahoman in the record books. Grunting at noises helped.
One of the finest whitetails to fall in Oklahoma in 2016 came off land open to all.
Ross Fenley, a 26-year-old mechanical engineer for International Paper Co., shot it while hunting with friends at the Three Rivers Wildlife Management Area. The hunter from Valliant, Oklahoma, has hunted there almost exclusively since he was 7 or 8 years old.
His dad and grandpa hunted the McCurtain County tract as well.
Ross and his buddies have been setting up camp at the WMA for nine years. They erect a cook shack – plywood walls with a plastic tarp for a roof – but they sleep in campers. They call it the Boar’s Nest.
In 2016, most of the guys arrived the Friday night before the state’s muzzleloader season opened. The plan was to stay through the next Sunday, nine days in all. Ross burned a week’s vacation in order to go.
About 3:30 p.m. on Oct. 27, the Thursday following the opener, Ross threw a climbing stand over his shoulder and hiked about 400 yards in to a place where he’d discovered rubs, scrapes and large tracks three days earlier.
“It was super hot, probably 80 to 85 degrees,” he said. “I was sweating like crazy.”
His first two hours aloft were uneventful. When Ross finally heard something in the distance, he dug out his tube and gave a couple of grunts. The noise stopped.
“I thought, Well, it must not have been a deer,” he said.
Between 10 and 15 minutes later, he heard the sound again and responded with two more grunts. Again, nothing happened.
A quarter-hour later, however, Ross looked in that same direction and saw a buck approaching from 60 yards. A lot of brush was between them.
“I didn’t know how many points it had,” he said. “All I could see was half of one side of its rack. The mass alone told me it was a shooter, and then I saw a kicker.”
Ross couldn’t take his eyes off the deer. He was ready to shoot it at the first opportunity, and that came at 6:15. When the animal stepped clear of some cover at 30 yards, he squeezed the trigger.
The buck ran about 40 yards and collapsed behind a small bushy pine tree. Even though he thought the deer was down for the count, Ross reloaded his .50-caliber muzzleloader.
A good idea.
He had just finished reloading when the whitetail jumped up and put the pedal to the metal.
“I could see blood on its mouth as it was running,” Ross said. “But I shot again anyway, hitting it behind the shoulder a second time. That dropped the deer. It might’ve taken three steps before it fell.”
Ross waited 30 minutes before approaching his buck. Standing over it, seeing the whole rack for the first time, the hunter was slack-jawed.
“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. All the points. All the mass,” he said. “I was in shock.”
Ross took his stand to the truck and drove back to the Boar’s Nest. He told the only person there he’d shot a 10-pointer, and he kept up the ruse when everyone else arrived. They didn’t know otherwise until they reached the deer.
The four of them rotated during the long drag out of the woods. They pulled the buck the length of four football fields, mostly uphill and through some thick brush and briars, all by flashlight.
Biologists believe the buck was 51/2 years old. It managed to avoid other hunters and trail cameras for most of its life. Nobody had seen it before it breathed its last.
Ross figures he’ll never top this deer. He told NewsOK, “Probably the rest of my life will be a letdown.”
This article was published in the Jan/Feb 2018 edition of Rack Magazine. Subscribe today to have Rack Magazine delivered to your home.
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