A lot of factors — the rut, moon, weather, temperature and hunting pressure — influence deer movement. Only one, a driving rain, will almost always keep the animals off their feet.
In 2025, Lawrence Dismukes had been unable to pattern the No. 1 whitetail on his Most Wanted list because it had already felt the sting of an arrow. All he knew about the deer was that it didn’t feel safe while the sun was shining.
When he learned a heavy rain was going to settle over his property on Dec. 4, the former civil engineer’s mental gears began grinding.
Lawrence first retrieved trail camera images of his target buck in 2023, when it was a 2-year-old and wasn’t worth remembering. In fact, he’d forgotten about it until it appeared the next year.
As a 3-year-old, the whitetail looked promising enough for him to declare it off-limits for family members who hunt the Lowndes County, Alabama, tract. Lawrence, known by friends as Diz (also his late father’s nickname), passed up the deer four times that season.
The first photo of the buck in 2025 came July 4, and Diz enjoyed watching it grow throughout the summer. Its rack was easy to differentiate because of the left side’s forked P2s and its knobby brow tines.
On the bow season’s second Saturday, his nephew, David Hussey, couldn’t pass up a shot at the distinctive deer. Afterward, the young man wished he hadn’t loosed the arrow, which hit the buck in the hip.
“He was sick,” Diz said. “He knew how special the deer was to me.”
Special, in this case, meant it was an opportunity for Diz to obtain his first 150-plus-inch whitetail with his bow, a life goal where such deer are about as common as $100 power bills in December.
“I put down my rifle seven or eight years ago,” says the 49-year-old. “Bowhunting is a lot more fun. It humbles you a good bit, but I don’t care if I never shoot another deer with a rifle.
“My nephew’s hit made the buck completely nocturnal,” Diz added. “I couldn’t pattern it at all.”
A hard rain settled over Lowndesboro on Dec. 4, pelting the earth from 10 a.m. until almost 3 p.m. Diz knew deer don’t particularly like to move during storms, so he wanted to be in place when the rain quit.
“I was working that day, busting my butt to get home in time,” he said. “I was in my driveway at 2:40, and in my ground blind by 3:10. Ten minutes after I settled in, a 7-pointer walked out.
“I used my phone to get some video footage of the buck, but then it started acted as if something else was coming,” Diz continued. “The blind’s left window was closed, so I couldn’t really see what the 7-pointer was looking at. Figuring something was out there, I slid the phone in my pocket and began leaning forward. That’s when I saw there was another buck.
“I thought, Oh, crap. I wasn’t ready. I’d just put my phone up.
“I could actually hear it breathing, too,” he added. “I probably looked at the deer for 45 seconds, and then it walked on into the food plot.”
It was not walking when it left the field, however, and it remained on its feet for only 60 yards.
Later, Diz’s daughter, son and friends joined in the celebration.
He says the buck weighed 185 pounds, about 15 pounds lighter than average 4-year-old bucks on his property.
This is the only whitetail he’s had measured. Ken Piper did the honors for Buckmasters, arriving at 189 4/8 inches. The 21-pointer fell into the record book’s irregular category.
“Years ago, back when there were a lot of soybeans, big deer were common in our neck of the woods. My father had several nice ones on the wall,” Diz said. “Now, they’re few and far between. A lot of what we kill are cull bucks.”
This one was no cull.