Nine Years of Yesterdays... Still-hunting might be unjustly underrated.
By John E. Phillips
Nine years have passed since Kevin Cottrell of Bonnieville, Kentucky, shot his career-best whitetail. But he remembers Nov. 11, 2007, as if it were only yesterday.
The 44-year-old hunts deer on his own 31-acre farm in Hart County.
“I’d been putting out bait in front of my trail camera since before the 2007 bow season arrived. This buck showed up at 7:30 a.m. on Halloween, and I got several pictures of it.
“My hunting partner, John Clay, and I bowhunted almost every day, hoping to take that deer,” he said.
“During bow season, John’s hunting spot was a knob on top of a hill, while mine was close to a pond,” Kevin continued. “Although we hunted those same two spots throughout bow season, we never saw the Halloween Buck or got any more pictures of him until gun season’s opening day.”
Kevin and John are coworkers. Every afternoon after work, they’d head to their stands, hoping to see the buck in the photos. Every three or four days, Kevin would check his cameras, always eager to see if the tall-tined deer had stepped in front of the lens.
On opening day of gun season, Kevin had to work late and didn’t have an opportunity to refresh his bait site or to hunt. Late that afternoon, however, he put out more corn.
“I learned later that the buck had come by my stand three times that night, but it didn’t eat the corn,” Kevin said. “I guess it passed by just so I could get pictures of him.”
Kevin and Clay hunted from dawn to dusk the next day. Although they put forth maximum effort, they didn’t see the Halloween Buck.
The following morning, Nov. 11, Kevin and Clay returned to their stands.
“A little while after daylight, I decided to get out of my stand and start stalking,” Kevin said.
He called Clay and told him: “I’m walking from where I am to the far end of the property as slowly as possible. Then I’ll turn around and start walking back to my stand. I might take all day to make that stalk.”
When Kevin reached the top of a hill, he jumped three does. He knew a buck might be nearby, so he sat there for a long time, hoping one might cruise through to scent-check the bedding area.
He eventually grew tired of the vigil and resumed still-hunting.
Kevin quietly followed an old logging road off the hill until he reached a saddle in the mountain. There, the track turned south and downhill. Very thick foliage bordered the right-hand side of the road.
“I heard a noise, looked into the thicket and saw long tines rising above the brush about 30 yards away,” he said. “I didn’t know whether it was the Halloween Buck or not, but because of the length of those points, I decided to take the shot as soon as it stepped out of the thicket.
“I don’t know how the buck didn’t spot me,” he added.
“I raised my rifle and followed the buck as it slipped through the brush, then ahead of it to the place where it would step into the road. As soon as that deer emerged, I knew it would likely see me, so I’d have only a fraction of a second to make the shot.
“When the buck stepped out, I forced myself not to look at the rack, to keep my rifle’s crosshairs on the deer’s neck and shoulder. Then I squeezed the trigger.
“As soon as I saw the deer on the road in front of me, I knew it was the Halloween Buck. I had two videos and two photographs of it from my trail camera. I knew exactly what it looked like.
“Afterward, I called my friend John and announced, ‘I got him.’ John asked, ‘What did you shoot? What did you shoot?’ So I repeated, ‘I got HIM … the big one.’”
At first, Kevin was very surprised he encountered the buck on the opposite end of the property from where it was photographed. But then he remembered a detail he’d forgotten.
“When I first started putting out my trail cameras, I found a scrape right near where I took this buck. It was as big as a car hood, one of the largest scrapes I’ve ever seen in the woods.”
After word spread that Kevin had shot an outstanding whitetail, a property owner a half-mile north of Kevin’s land shared trail camera pictures he’d collected in September, when the Halloween Buck was still in velvet. As soon as bow season opened, the man began lying in wait for the buck, but he never saw it. Kevin believes hunting pressure pushed the deer onto his farm.
This article was published in the August 2017 edition of Rack magazine. Subscribe today to have Rack delivered to your home.