Cows on the lam lead Nicholas Johnson of Coleman, Oklahoma, to the bull of the woods back in 2012.
Nick hadn't planned to hunt the opening day of rifle season, a Saturday, because he'd scheduled the next nine days off from the casino where he works. But the 34-year-old rose early that morning anyway.
"That Friday night, Nov. 16, a neighbor called and said my cows were over there, but not to worry about it; they'd be fine," Nick said. "When I woke up, I started worrying anyway and decided to go see where they were."
Before returning home, Nick took a pit stop near his barn. On the way back to his truck, he paused just long enough to look down a fence line that sloped toward a distant creek.
"I just thought I'd check, you know? It hadn't been daylight an hour at that point," he said.
Nick saw a deer about 200 yards distant and decided its size merited a more discerning look. After retrieving his binoculars from the truck, he confirmed it was a small buck.
But he also noticed another, bigger deer, one that sent him back to the truck for his rifle.
"I went into full hunt mode then," he said.
Nick crept as close as he dared and watched the buck for about 15 minutes. It was walking so slowly, it might as well have been slogging through chest-high mud instead of switchgrass.
The shot was a piece of cake.
"When I got down there, I could smell the buck before I saw it. It stunk bad," he said, referring to its urine-stained tarsal glands.
Nick didn't have a lot of time. His friend, Mike, hung the deer while he went to work.
"We celebrated that night and for the rest of the year!" he smiled.
He had no idea a buck of that caliber was roaming the farm. His only clue came after the fact.
"I didn't do any more hunting that year," he told me. "I decided I might as well pull (my only) trail camera. When I was going through the images, there were two pictures of that buck."
Be sure to see the whole story of Nick's hour-long hunt in the August issue of Rack magazine. The Atoka County buck's composite score is 202 2/8 inches.
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