Some bucks just can't say no to a hot date.
When he missed Ol' Two Drop on Nov. 16, 2015, Tim Hatton was convinced he'd blown what would likely be his only chance at the buck. Actually, that was the second time he'd left the farm without spilling blood.
The hunter from Clay City, Kentucky, might've shot at the 20-pointer with his rifle that day, but his first crack at it came more than a year earlier.
The first time they crossed paths, he was bowhunting from inside a shooting house. The deer was two steps away from becoming a very large kabob when it suddenly winded the hunter, snorted, and took off running.
Tim and his buddy, the neighboring landowner, decided to give the deer a reprieve after that, to allow it another year to grow even bigger. And it did.
On the Monday following opening weekend of the 2015 rifle season, Tim went to a stand in a thicket bordering the food plot where he'd almost got a shot at the deer the previous year.
"It was a good morning. By 8:00, I had seen seven or eight does and five small bucks," Tim told Dale Weddle, who's writing the story for Rack magazine. "That's when I looked up into the hardwoods and saw Ol' Two Drop between 200 and 250 yards away. He was easy to identify because he was the only deer we had on the place with such a high rack.
"I waited until he got a little closer. When he stopped, his head and neck were in the open, so I aimed for his neck and shot," Tim continued.
The buck disappeared post haste, and unscathed from the looks of it. Tim found no sign of a hit.
It was raining when Tim awoke Tuesday morning, which is why he went to a covered shooting house about 40 yards from where he'd shot at the buck the previous day.
Two does burst out of the thicket about 8 a.m. A third materialized moments later, followed by Ol' Two Drop. And a fourth doe appeared after that.
"He stopped about 90 yards from my shooting house," Tim said. "I raised my .30-06, found the deer in the scope, squeezed the trigger, and he went down."
When Tim went over and lifted the buck's head to admire the rack, he discovered a chunk of antler missing about 3 inches up from the left base. His bullet from the previous morning had almost sheared off that side.
The 20-pointer is a mainframe 4x5. Irregular growth accounts for nearly 40 inches - 21.3 percent - of its BTR score (196 7/8 composite).
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