Freezing in a deer stand was pretty low on the list of things Dalton Hunter wanted to do during Indiana's 2015 gun opener. The high school football player would've happily stayed in the bed on Nov. 15, but his Uncle Andrew called and rousted him at 4:45.
His uncle couldn't join him, but he wanted to make sure Dalton was in a stand before sunup.
Because he hadn't completely lost interest in the opening-weekend tradition, Dalton got his grandfather to drive him out to a friend's 600-acre farm, which is next to a 20,000-acre state forest. The boy and his uncle help the landowner in exchange for hunting rights.
"My uncle felt I should go to the lock-on stand where he'd shot a 140-incher during bow season," Dalton told Ed Waite, who's writing the story for Rack magazine. "It was in a sycamore tree in a fencerow between standing corn and a cow pasture."
Dalton realized almost immediately he wasn't wearing enough clothes.
"I was so cold I made up my mind to shoot the first deer I saw, figuring I could dress it, drag it out and get warm," he said.
The first deer he saw was a small doe. The second was a young 6-pointer. Given the choice, he opted to try for the doe.
Both disappeared before it was light enough for him to bring his gun to bear, but he spotted a different one at 150 yards.
The buck, a good one, was running.
"I didn't know what else to do, so I yelled almost at the top of my lungs, 'Rahhhhh,' and the buck stopped in its tracks and looked right at me," he said. A moment later, it was on the ground.
"After a few minutes, I called my uncle and said, 'I just shot a monster,' and my uncle replies, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah … whatever.
Really, how big is it?'"
That answer is a BTR composite score of 209 inches.
Dalton's whitetail is a poster buck for the BTR. The mainframe 6x5's unmatched typical point, side-to-side differences and abnormal points destroy its B&C score with deductions.
— Read Recent Blog! Lightning and Kansas: David Wagler / BTR Composite Score: 192 1/8