How long does it take for the woods to settle after a banshee-doe alerts the entire state to the presence of a suspicious lump in a tree?
About 30 minutes, says Logan Howell, who successfully fought the urge to return to his Kentucky home after being busted by one such public service-minded doe in 2015. If he'd listened to his gut and left, he might still be drooling over trail camera photographs instead of swooning over new taxidermy.
Logan had plenty of nighttime photos of the buck he arrowed on Oct.16, 2015, some going back four years. He'd seen it bloom from a 110-inch "nothing-special" buck to one wearing a rack knocking on 200 inches.
The biggest spurt in antler growth - 60 inches - came between 3 1/2 and 4 1/2 years of age, he said.
Logan, a state policeman, was hunting family ground adjacent to the huge Daniel Boone National Forest in eastern Kentucky.
He had already hunted the deer for three straight days when he decided to take Friday off and go for four. He also altered his routine by a couple of hours.
"I had been going to my stand around noon, which makes for a long day," he told Dale Weddle, who's writing the story for Rack magazine. "So I waited until 2 p.m. to go to the old house place.
"Visibility there is limited. It's just gnarly. I climbed about 18 feet up a white pine," he added.
The first deer he saw was the vociferous doe. Thirty minutes after she left, the buck with the familiar face showed.
"From that point, I could pretty much hear my heart beating," Logan said.
The deer's heart stopped beating a few minutes later.
Score-wise, tine length almost always trumps mass, and this Laurel County whitetail is a prime example. The four foot-long uprights - four of the 19 points - account for 27 percent of the rack's bone. Its composite score is 197 2/8 inches.
I've left out most of the details of Logan's story, so be sure to look for it in an upcoming issue of Rack magazine.
— Read Recent Blog! What are the Odds?: James Henderson / BTR Composite Score: 233 5/8