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When Stars and Buzzards Align

When Stars and Buzzards Align

By Mike Handley

A grouping of crows is called a murder. Geese (on the ground) are a gaggle. Deer herd, ducks flock and fish school.

Do you know what a group of buzzards is called? A wake.

It's only because a man saw a wake of buzzards that Matthew Colvin's 2015 buck didn't become food for fishes, alligators and turtles. If the dead deer had remained undiscovered for 24 more hours, Mississippi River floodwaters would've turned it into a pungent floating buffet.

Matt, a first-time guest at the Mississippi club, shot the 204 5/8-inch (gross) whitetail on Dec. 19. His host was Ryan Daniel, another Louisiana resident. The animal was found Dec. 22, when another member visited the tract to secure things ahead of the expected flood.

The club is near Lake Mary, a large oxbow in southern Adams County, Mississippi. The water was high when Matt and Ryan arrived in the wee hours of Dec. 18, so high that they had to park and use a boat to reach their destination.

Matt saw one crippled spike during his first afternoon in a stand. On Saturday morning, he saw one deer and about 20 hogs. That afternoon, he went to a different spot.

"As I was walking to the (new) stand Saturday afternoon, I saw scrapes and rubs everywhere. I could tell some were made by a bigger buck," Matt told Lisa Price, who's writing the story for Rack magazine.

About three hours after he'd settled in, Matt heard something walking through water, and he eventually saw this buck enter a shooting lane between 80 and 100 yards distant.

"I put my binoculars up and immediately put them back down. It was like: snap up, snap down," he said. "Right away, it was: Oh ... my ... God. I was amazed."

That means he knew it was a shooter by the club's definition. There were too many points to count, but he thought it might score in the 170s.

He shot the buck, but there was no sign of a hit when Matt and Ryan began looking for it. They spent another four hours zigzagging the area on Sunday, and then they had to return home.

Two days later, the other guy saw the buzzards and investigated. The man had gone to the camp to retrieve a four-wheeler ahead of the expected flood.

"I regret we didn't find the animal that next morning," Matt told Lisa. "If we had only extended our search in that direction, we would have.

"That's the biggest deer I'll shoot in my entire life," he added.

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