Sleep deprivation is a small price to pay for the chance to be in a treestand when conditions are perfect for whitetails to be on their feet.
Tyler Young not only paid that price in early December, but he also wound up dipping into his wallet to ensure the home he’s about to build with a new wife will have both a new piece of wall art and a full freezer.
The latter wasn’t planned.
The 29-year-old machine shop shipping clerk has hunted the same “straight up-and-down mountain” for two decades. His late grandfather taught him a lot about it, even suggesting a particular poplar tree as an ambush site, where the boy subsequently took almost a dozen deer throughout the years.
“They were mostly small ones, but then I’m a jerky guy,” he said. “I’ve always been more interested in eating them.”
When Tyler heard that a cold front bearing sleet and ice was supposed to arrive on Dec. 4, he couldn’t wait to climb the mountain with his rifle. After working the night shift at the machine shop, he left for his Old Fort, North Carolina, home at 6:30 a.m. so he could wipe himself down and change into his hunting clothes.
Soon afterward, he drove and parked his side-by-side about a mile from his house, and then he hiked another mile uphill to a ladder stand. When he reached the summit about 8:20, he prayed for the opportunity just to see a deer.
Almost immediately, his phone received a notification that a 5-pointer had crossed in front of his nearby camera. To lure it closer, Tyler used his grunt call.
“Size don’t matter to me,” he repeated. “I want to eat them more than I want to admire antlers.”
The young buck responded, but it was moving too quickly and the terrain was too thick for Tyler to attempt a shot.
Soon, a doe came past.
“It was already a spectacular morning,” he said. “If you see two deer on that mountain in one season, you’ve done something.”
Ten minutes after he’d sent a text message to his dad, sharing the joy, he heard yet another deer approaching. His father had said a buck might be following the doe he’d seen earlier.
The morning’s third deer was also a doe, and a yearling was in her wake.
“That made four deer in 40 minutes,” he beamed. “Things slowed down after that, though. I didn’t see anything else, nothing, for the next two and a half hours.”
When Tyler began dozing off around 11:30, he decided he’d stay for another half-hour. He was dog-tired after having worked the late shift.
Halfway into those remaining 30 minutes, he heard squirrels barking and the loud admonishments of wood wrens. He knew something was approaching even before he heard what he describes as somebody wearing snow shoes, swishing through the leaves as if they had no care in the world.
Initially, his mind conjured an image of the 5-pointer he’d seen while his hunt was unfolding. He realized moments later, however, that the deer was wearing a lot more antler than that.
The buck was in a laurel thicket, only 40 yards distant, but he couldn’t tell much about it. All he knew was that it was far bigger than the 5-pointer, and the wind had shifted, putting it on a collision course with his scent stream.
Sure enough, as soon as the animal stepped into a volleyball-sized gap in the vegetation, it winded him.
“When I got a good look at it, I thought, Oh, Lord. That’s the biggest deer I’ve seen in my entire life!” he said.
Rather than ogle the antlers for even a second more, Tyler slipped off his safety and took the shot, dropping the whitetail on the spot.
For the next 20 or 30 minutes, Tyler shook like a Labrador retriever watching mallards flying into range. The normally talkative hunter was also having trouble speaking complete sentences.
After he regained his composure, he Face-timed a buddy, Adam Hudgins, to show him the deer, hoping he’d confirm that its rack would easily surpass the 150-inch mark.
“One-fifty-plus,” Adam agreed.
As soon as photos of the deer arrived on his phone, Tyler’s father left work to join him. He wound up walking 2 miles to participate in the celebration.
Tyler’s taxidermist estimated the buck weighed about 200 pounds. He also recommended Tyler seek out Wayne Cox to have it scored for Buckmasters. An hour and a half drive to Lenoir was nothing.
Wayne taped the 13-pointer at 177 inches, and it fell within the organization’s Regular category (formerly known as typical). The tall rack is a mainframe 5x5 with three small irregular flyers. The P2s measure 11 4/8 and 13 inches, the P3s are 9 6/8 and 10 6/8 inches, and P4s are 6 4/8 and 6 1/8.
“Mountain deer like this aren’t common up in McDowell County,” Tyler said. “I was definitely blessed.”