The One That Got Away
By John E. Phillips
Tony Viteritto has hunted Kim Burrows’ 45 acres in north Alabama since October 2012, the year shoulder problems caused him to trade his regular bow for a crossbow. Going into the 2016 season, he’d taken two 8-pointers from what he calls the Skull Stand, so named because he found a deer skull nearby.
He’d never seen a buck there that would score more than 150 inches, nor had his or the landowner’s trail cameras photographed any.
That changed on a hot Nov. 10, 2016.
Tony went to the Skull Stand around 3 p.m. that day. Although he was wearing only a t-shirt and lightweight pants, he still worked up a sweat en route to the ladder.
The mosquitoes and gnats were out in full force at the creek crossing.
Tony eventually heard a rustling sound in the leaves, too loud for a squirrel.
“By the time I recognized it was probably a deer, the buck was so close – only 10 yards away – that I knew if I moved, it would see me,” Tony said.
When he noticed the size of the rack and the drop tine, his heart almost stopped.
A veteran deer hunter, Tony realized he needed to quit looking at the rack and focus on finding an opening in front of the deer in the privet. He raised his crossbow when the buck paused before reaching the creek.
When it stopped again, trees were obscuring the deer’s head and vitals. Only the hindquarters were visible.
Next, the drop-tined buck presented a quartering-away target only 15 to 18 yards from the stand. As darkness encroached, Tony squeezed his crossbow’s trigger.
When the three-bladed, chisel-point broadhead smacked the buck, it jumped across the 10-yard-wide creek and mule-kicked, breaking a limb on the far bank.
In the seconds that followed, Tony heard the buck splashing on its way to an island out in the creek. Silence followed, presumably while it ran the length of the spit of land, and then more splashing.
“When the woods went silent, I thought the buck had either died or bedded down on a second island,” he said.
After waiting 30 minutes, Tony went to the creek to look for his arrow and blood.
“I immediately called Kim, and he came to help me search for the deer,” Tony said.
The men reluctantly called it quits at 9 p.m. They searched most of the following day, but found no trace of the buck.
Tony recovered his bolt a couple of months later, from Leonard Jarrett. The arrow had traveled between the ribs and the hide and was barely sticking out of the lower part of the buck’s neck.
It was still in there when Leonard shot the buck a quarter-mile away on Jan. 4.
“If I’d aimed a quarter-inch farther back, I feel certain the buck would be hanging in my living room right now,” Tony lamented.