Rack Magazine

Arkansas man a believer in trail cameras after his first photograph.

Stumbling upon a shed antler in 2015 set the stage for Brandon Brewer’s deer season the following year.

The hunter from Humnoke, Arkansas, found the half-rack on the farm he works. He’d been walking the edge of a reservoir filled with buckbrush, which had sprouted during a drought.

A 70- to 100-yard-wide strip of timber stretched for half a mile within the sea of low-slung growth, and soybeans and corn surrounded the area. It’s perfect deer habitat.

“No one had ever seen this buck,” Brandon said. “So I assumed it was passing through, headed somewhere else.”

Even so, Brandon thought about the giant whitetail constantly and put out a trail camera. Much to his delight, the very first photograph he retrieved was of this gorilla.

His hunting area spans almost 70 acres, 40 of which are timbered. Ten are set aside in CRP.

When the 2016 season arrived, Brandon devoted 12 straight and uneventful days to hunting where he’d collected trail cam photos of the enormous deer.

“I guess that buck was smarter than me,” he said. “Every picture I got of it was either late at night or about 4:30 a.m. It was primarily moving at night.”

Brandon woke early on Nov. 26, the Saturday after Thanksgiving. When he walked outside, he almost decided to go back to bed.

He was disappointed to see a heavy fog and feel a strong wind blowing from the wrong direction for him to access his usual spot.

“I needed a northwesterly or northeasterly wind to get into my stand without the deer smelling me, but it was blowing from the southeast,” Brandon said.

He drove his truck to a cut 60-acre cornfield and hid behind some brush in a fencerow. To reach the place he thought offered his best chance to see the buck, he’d have to walk across the stubble.

“I left my truck at 5:00. The sky was pitch black dark, and the fog was so heavy you could almost cut it with a knife,” Brandon said. “I was confident the buck couldn’t see me crossing that cut cornfield.”

He found some saplings growing close together that would serve as a decent natural blind, so he planted his stool and sat.

“Even after the sun rose, I couldn’t see more than about 80 yards through that fog,” he continued.

When Brandon hadn’t spotted any deer by 7:45, he thought about going home. Just then, he looked up and saw a deer walk out of the timber.

He didn’t have his binoculars, and his riflescope was fogged.

“I moved the scope around until I could see antlers. I thought it might be the big buck,” he said.

Slowly, he lowered his rifle and wiped his scope. The buck was walking into some tall grass, moving away from him.

“I got upset,” Brandon said. “I blew my grunt call four or five times. I also had a bleat can that I turned upside down several times.”

When he got no reaction from the buck, he put both calls back in his pack and pulled out his telephone.

“I texted my wife: Well, I guess I’ve missed that big buck,” he said. “After I hit the send button, I looked up and spotted the gorilla walking the edge of the CRP, coming straight toward me from about 120 yards.”

When the buck was 70 yards away, it turned and offered a broadside target. Brandon shouldered his rifle and used the side of one of the saplings for a rest. When he was solid, he squeezed the trigger.

“Afterward, I jumped up and ran toward the buck. I almost reached it before it hit the ground,” he grinned.

Brandon’s bullet had entered high, just under the deer’s backbone, so he administered a coup de grâce.

If I’d shot 2 inches higher, I’d have missed, he thought.

When he put his hands on the antlers, he realized the Arkansas County 16-pointer was far bigger than he’d estimated.

“My second thought was, I wish my Grandpa, (who passed away a few years ago), could have seen this buck,” he said. “Grandpa got me started deer hunting when I was about 10 years old.”

This article was published in the March 2018 edition of Rack Magazine. Subscribe today to have Rack Magazine delivered to your home.

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