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Tom Hamel Buck
By Mike Handley
It might be impossible to determine the extent of one deer’s effect upon the economy in Republic County, Kan., a couple of years ago, but there’s no doubt a substantial amount of cash changed hands when photographs of the animal hit the Internet.
An influx of nonresidents hungry to lease hunting ground is never appreciated by those who... READ MORE
Blake Voltz Buck
By Mike Handley
The only sound worse than the steel-on-brass click of a firing pin punching a dud primer is the raucous laughter of the deer gods, one of whom is surely named Murphy. Just ask Blake Voltz. That’s precisely what happened to the deer hunter from Columbus, Ga., back in 1997, when he was staring through crosshairs at the biggest buck he’d e... READ MORE
Mike Beatty Buck
By Dan Armitage
Fumbling nervously in the darkness for one of his distinctive white-fletched arrows, Mike Beatty had made one of the toughest decisions of his life: to temporarily abandon the search for the monstrous whitetail he'd shot at dusk. Still not convinced that he'd chosen correctly, the Ohio bowhunter nocked the projectile on the barbed wire fence to mar... READ MORE
Brad Heuvelmann Buck
By Brad Heuvelmann
While hunting after a heavy snowfall about 10 years ago, I ran into an older gentleman dragging out a once-in-a-lifetime whitetail. He had taken the buck early that morning and had been struggling to get the huge deer to his truck. It was about lunchtime, and he was only halfway to his vehicle. I was happy to give him a hand, just for the opportuni... READ MORE
Dann Hughes Buck
By Savannah Hughes
For my dad, getting up early on a cold morning, layering himself in camouflage and then sitting in a deer stand or duck blind rates right up there with breathing. He lives for (and because of) it!
Half his wardrobe is camo, and I guarantee that he gets his money's worth out of it all. It does not make sense to some people why Dad and other hunters... READ MORE
Johnny King Buck
By Mike Handley
The two men approached the downed buck cautiously, from different sides. Johnny King’s bullets had dropped the enormous whitetail, but Brad Heisz, who’d answered his cousin’s desperate call for help, had obligingly administered the coup de grace. Brad reached it first, while Johnny was circling around in front. He knelt, grasped t... READ MORE
Michael Rothman Buck
By Mike Handley
Michael Rothman knows cold. So convinced that, no matter how early his arrival, he was spooking deer out of a cornfield en route to his shooting house, the deer hunter from Bonnieville, Ky., decided to just spend the night in the box blind. It wasn’t as if there were a Scotty, a Samantha or a Jeannie who could beam, nose-wrinkle or head-bob h... READ MORE
Kevin Fitch Buck
By Ed Waite
It was as if the ground opened up and swallowed Kevin Fitch’s buck. One minute, it was on the receiving end of a shotgun slug (he hoped). The next, it was gone.
Not fall-down-dead gone. Not running-with-the-wind-and-leaving-a-blood-trail gone.
Just gone, leaving the hunter from Norwalk, Ohio, with Rodney Dangerfield eyes and a mouth full of... READ MORE