Alabama gained a new state record last season, and it came off public land.
Michael Ray Perry of Vinemont smoked the 18-pointer on Nov. 5 while hunting within the Black Warrior Wildlife Management Area, part of the sprawling Bankhead National Forest. The 57-year-old was accompanied that day by his wife, Kathy.
For the last 45 years, Michael has hunted and run traps on several Alabama WMAs. He took his first deer, a doe, during a draw hunt at Wolf Creek WMA in 1988. He shot buck No. 1 at the Sam R. Murphy WMA a couple of seasons later. None of the nearly 60 bucks he's taken since come close to the one he shot in 2021, however.
On the fateful day, the couple walked a mile and a half from their vehicle in the dark before Kathy stopped, and Michael continued for another 45 minutes before reaching a creek crossing where he'd retrieved trail camera images of several nice bucks over the years.
The crossing is below a 40-yard-wide and 500-yard-long mountainside shelf, a favorite travel route of a deer he'd nicknamed the Bench Buck. Michael thought the whitetail was bedding within some blowdowns at one end. Cam images revealed it liked to feed on acorns en route to the crossing.
The first deer he saw that morning was a young 7-pointer, which kept looking back over its shoulder. The Bench Buck was behind him, though Michael wasn't absolutely sure when he saw only one side of his rack.
Regardless, he decided to shoot the animal as soon as it cleared the brambles only 45 yards distant.
When Michael later walked up to the dead deer, his legs grew wobbly.
"Immediately, I teared up and went into a full-blown cry," he told John Phillips, who's writing the story for Rack magazine. "I'd never taken a buck that size in my entire life."
Rather than walk out and seek help in retrieving the animal, which would've revealed his honey hole, Michael dragged the deer for an hour until he reached Kathy. That's when he called three friends with a deer cart.
It took five people to load the 6 1/2-year-old buck onto the cart, and more than two hours to push and pull it to a road.
The Black Warrior WMA encompasses nearly 100,000 acres, split into two zones. Michael has hunted the tract since he was 8 years old, when he used to accompany his father.
He might have started out bent on squirrel annihilation and collecting venison, but Michael now targets only mature bucks.
"I've learned that to take older bucks on public lands, I must spend as much time afield as possible before, during and after deer season," he said. "I keep a logbook of everything my friends, family and I see and learn there, including weather conditions, time of year and where we've scouted and hunted."
Mission accomplished. His latest reward tallies 195 6/8 inches.
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