Chris Fowler apparently knows how to keep his powder dry.
He hadn't planned on doing it; ordinarily wouldn't consider it. But when the veteran deer hunter headed out on opening day of Tennessee's 2015 muzzleloader season, his rifle was still stoked with the two pellets and .45-caliber sabot he'd stuffed down the barrel in 2014.
Chris had originally planned to discharge the gun the day before the opener. But a friend asked for a hand, and the day got away from him.
"I was a little concerned about the gun's ability to fire after sitting in the house for that long," he told John Phillips, who's writing the story for Rack magazine.
Even so, rather than delay his first day afield, Chris was in his stand before dawn, a new primer on his pre-loaded gun. It was difficult not to ponder the possibility of a misfire, or whether the gun would fire at all.
Between 7:30 and 8:00, Chris spotted an antsy doe that kept looking back over her shoulder. He wasn't surprised to see the buck that soon appeared on the same trail.
The rifle made the expected BOOM, but the resulting smoke obscured the deer's escape. The shot felt good, but because Chris hadn't seen the animal's reaction, he couldn't swear he'd even hit it.
Just to give the deer a little extra time, he remained in his stand for another 10 minutes. The whole time, he thought about how moisture might have compromised the powder, how the bullet might have corroded. Or maybe something else had happened inside the barrel that could have caused him to miss.
But he needn't have worried.
The Stewart County buck is impressively symmetrical. The typical 5x5 frame has identical totals. The side-to-side difference of 5 6/8 inches comes only from the irregular column, where the right side's seven points outscore the seven on the left.
With a BTR composite score of 192 inches, the rack is far more impressive than the deer's surprisingly small body.
"I figured he weighed only 120 to 130 pounds, field-dressed," Chris said. "It's the strangest deer I've ever taken."
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