No AI Here

“Don’t you be AI-ing me!”

That was the reaction of a friend when Courtland Sewell sent him a photo of the buck he shot in November, 2025.

“It’s not AI,” Courtland wrote back. “It’s for real. I wouldn’t even know how to do AI.”

He had been hunting his 56 acres in Kaufman Co., Texas, for the fourth year. He’d hung one trail cam in 2025, but due to a heavy work schedule, he hadn’t been able to check the camera when he should have, he says.

“The battery died, so I didn’t have any intel about big bucks coming onto my land. I tell you, this year, I’m using a solar camera.”

The 53-year-old cattle ranch foreman plants wheat and oats on the back of his property to give his cattle extra sustenance in winter, and the hunter a little extra popularity with deer.

Courtland would not have gone out at all, on Nov. 9, if not for the charm of a five-year-old girl named Rhiannon, granddaughter of a good friend.

“She asked to go hunting, and I wanted her grandfather to experience the same joy that I did when I took my seven-year-old granddaughter Bethany out to the woods for the first time,” he says.

“Bethany saw me shoot a buck and said, Pops I gotta have one. Then she shot an 8-point and took all the venison.”

After Rhiannon begged to go hunting, Courtland invited her grandpa, Rudy Hernandez, along. He and Rhiannon sat in a fully enclosed blind with a sliding glass window, 20 minutes from Courtland’s house. Meanwhile, Rhiannon’s father, Aaron Anderson, sat with Courtland in a low stand wrapped in burlap 300 yards away, facing in opposite directions. Courtland brought along a 6.5 Grendel for the girl to shoot.

“It has no recoil, so it’s ideal for a child,” he says.

On the day, the temperature was mild, and overhead were bluebird skies.

“I had some photos of a younger version of the buck from 2023. I didn’t realize I had seen him before until I saw him come out of the woods,” Courtland says.

“He was the biggest I’d ever seen, and I’ve been hunting over 40 years. We sat two hours, and he was the only buck we saw. He appeared to feel comfortable, stepping through the oats.”

The men were talking loudly when they caught a glimpse of the deer in the distance. Courtland pulled his binoculars up and realized that the buck had a double drop tine.

“He was 400 yards away still too far for an ethical shot, but Aaron was going shoot! shoot! He’s gonna get away! I told him, I want him to come to safe range.”

The buck was at Courtland’s 8 o’clock. It grazed in the oat patch then came closer, hesitated, stopped, took a bite and continued. That went on for 20 minutes, before it got to 250 yards.

“I played it safe, even though Aaron kept saying, Buddy when you gonna shoot? Once the buck turned broadside, giving me its right shoulder, I shot a perfect heart shot.”

The buck ran 30 yards and collapsed when it got out of sight. After 15 nervous minutes, the pair approached.

Sure enough, it was the buck first seen in 2023 with two kickers protruding straight up in the back.

At 235 5/8 inches, the Sewell buck score is the largest recorded in Texas since 2013, eighth in Texas records overall for an irregular rack taken by rifle, and the largest on record from Kaufman County.

Buckmasters scorer Tim Huval measured the Sewell buck on May 12, 2026.