The evening clouded over, and a light drizzle set in. Colin and Pete picked up flashlights at the house, headed back to the stand and took off in the direction the buck had fled. They didn’t track far. Their lights shone on a magnificent sight--huge, velvet-clad antlers beamed back.
Pete ran to the rack, picked it up and counted off 18 points. Colin stood frozen, staring in disbelief. I knew I had arrowed a good buck, but this was an unbelievable buck, a giant! he thought. It was not the spike or the 6-pointer, that was for sure. He was pretty certain no one in the area had ever seen this buck before, or he would have heard about it. What a shot the kid had made. The buck ran 80 yards before expiring. It lay dead just off a trail barely 100 yards from his house.
Colin and Pete laughed and high-fived all way home. They still couldn’t believe it. Back at the house, Pete called Albert, who was driving home from his hunt, and told him that Colin had shot the spike. “Too bad you guys didn't see that 6-pointer,” Albert replied. He’d be there shortly to look at his son’s first bow deer. Pete smiled and hung up.
Colin told his mom, sister and brothers about his prize buck. Yeah, right… They were skeptical to say the least, and insisted that Colin and Pete take them down to see it. They grabbed umbrellas and flashlights, hopped on quads and took off down the trail.
Colin’s mom had seen a lot dead game in her life. She was awestruck by the giant deer. She hugged her son and congratulated him over and over as they stared at the frosty-looking velvet antlers. “I’m sure that was the deer that was grazing in my flowerbeds all summer, that’s how he got so big,” his mom said with a laugh. She smiled and remarked at how the deer and bear that Albert shot often looked much bigger alive than when they were on the ground. “But Colin, yours is just the opposite,” she said. “Surely that buck is larger down than it looked alive!” All the kids got a big kick out of that. Colin looked at his buck once more and thought, Wow, it really does look massive.
Albert pulled into the driveway and began unloading his gear. He told Colin and Pete that he had seen a few deer, but nothing major. Colin flicked on his light and led his dad the short ways through the bush. Albert froze and stared at the buck and then at his son. “He was speechless,” Colin remembers. “I'll never forget the look on his face. When he finally could talk, he asked me if I knew what I had just done. He told me that was every hunter's dream buck.”
Epilogue
Albert, a taxidermist, gross-scored Colin’s buck at around 205 inches. The monster had 18 points, long beams, killer brows and good mass. A mature buck for sure, probably 4 ½ or 5 ½. They decided to mount the buck just as Colin had seen it, in full velvet. Albert reports that once the water was gone from the velvet and the rack had dried, it scored 199 inches and change (score sheet below).
From my research I am convinced this is the largest wild buck ever shot by a 15-year-old bowhunter in North America. The achievement was made even more incredible since Colin shot the buck on his family’s land, 200 yards from his bedroom window.
One last thing: Albert confirms that neither he nor Colin nor Pete nor any of the neighbors had ever seen the titan before. The buck showed up for the first time one August afternoon and walked within 10 yards of a 15-year-old boy who had never shot a deer with a bow before, how cool is that?
