Knowing whitetails will walk over corn to Hoover up acorns, Dylan Martin figured he had two weeks before the unusual buck on his Most Wanted list went AWOL. Once the family farm’s oaks started dropping, his bait pile would get as much attention as a granola bar at a pizza buffet.
The 22-year-old hunter from Stoneville, North Carolina, became smitten with the unusually large buck the first time he checked his trail cameras in July, and it’s no wonder. Rockingham County yields some of his state’s finest, and Dylan’s neighbors had taken bucks wearing between 170 and 190 inches, most all of them Typicals with stickers and kickers. This deer’s rack, however, was surrealistic.
Dylan first became aware of it in midsummer 2018. The first buck photographed by his trail cameras wore a rack unlike any he’d seen outside of hunting magazines.
“I knew he was going to be special. I named him Anxiety, because that’s what he gave me. He would be there one day, and then he’d disappear and I’d think, He’s gone! He’d come back, and then be gone again,” Dylan said.
Because he thought he’d spook deer en route to his setup in the pre-dawn, Dylan didn’t hunt opening morning. Instead, he went out with his crossbow about 4:30 p.m.
The first deer he saw came through at 7:45, and the doe busted him. Dylan thought his hunt was finished, but another doe (if not the same one) appeared 10 minutes later.
Soon after that, eight bucks arrived. Anxiety was last in line, and Dylan let him come to within 16 yards and turn broadside before he squeezed the trigger.
The estimated 4½-year-old, 170-something-pound deer might be the second-largest whitetail ever felled in North Carolina by a crossbow, but it’s a state record as an irregular in velvet. (The top buck is a Semi-irregular.)
Its BTR score is 181 2/8 inches.
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