Cartridge Crisis is About to Get Real
By Mike Handley
For a week and a half in August 2024, Grainger Pollert swallowed more saliva than he could’ve spit during a lifetime of sitting in a dentist’s chair.
Collecting trail camera photographs of a massive whitetail EVERY SINGLE DAY will do that to a deer hunter, whether seasoned veteran or newbie. And the 21-year-old pipe welder from Seymour, Indiana, is not a bwana-come-lately.
In fact, Grainger hunts the same property where his late grandfather, Richard Downs, used to take him when he was only 3 years old. Regrettably, the old man neither saw nor shot anything like the buck that was tantalizing his grandson last year.
Grainger had four trail cameras out in 2024. He collected the first photo of the giant buck in early August, and the photos kept coming. Most of the images were from the same camera, and usually taken at night.
“I was shocked,” he said. “It was, by far, the biggest one I’ve ever seen.”
Eventually, the photo parade ceased. For two months, Grainger didn’t get a single image of the deer. The next time his camera photographed the buck was well into October, after the whitetail had shed its velvet.
Grainger figured his best bet for tagging the deer would be on high ground, a place he refers to as “the mountain,” closer to the rut. Activity always spikes there when bucks are looking for love.
He decided to wait for an optimal wind, too, which finally came through the weekend before the Hoosier State’s gun season opened. Before that, he bowhunted other areas, mainly hoping to get lucky.
The plan was solid, and the buck strolled to within bow range about 15 minutes before dark. It never stepped into the clear, however, always managing to keep trees and bushes between it and the vibrating hunter in his climbing stand.
Determined not to let the deer know he was there, Grainger waited until an hour after dark to descend his tree that day.
A week later, on the Nov. 16 firearms opener, Grainger was in his portable treestand an hour before sunrise. As soon as he’d strapped in, he said a prayer and then promptly fell asleep.
“I was only 8 feet off the ground,” he said. “If I’d gone any higher, I might’ve been skylined.”
Grainger’s wakeup call came just before daybreak, when an adolescent buck stepped on a stick less than 15 yards from his tree. Forty-five minutes later, he saw a doe leading a much bigger buck through the area.
For five minutes, Grainger could only watch as the duo weaved through trees and bushes. Had the doe not crossed a nearby logging road, he might’ve wound up going home empty-handed.
When the buck hit the road at 95 yards, Grainger was ready.
Afterward, the elated hunter called all of his close friends, his father and his uncle. He’d decided to wait an hour before going after the deer, but he couldn’t resist getting down to make sure there was blood.
When a buddy arrived, they took Grainger’s stand and gear down the mountain before following the blood trail. The tracking job lasted only five minutes.
Grainger was hunting with his grandfather’s single-action T/C Encore, chambered in .358 Winchester. The old man had left him with maybe one box of cartridges he’d acquired from a reloader. Grainger had only three left after sighting-in the gun prior to the season, and he has no idea when or even if he’ll be able to find more.
He was also wearing Papaw’s lucky Dale Earnhardt cap and the old man’s crucifix.
This buck, the largest ever taken off the property, will be his third for the wall.
Steven Taylor and Kevin Bateman scored the Washington County specimen for Buckmasters, arriving at 219 5/8 inches. The 23-pointer is a mainframe 6x5 with 67 4/8 inches of irregular growth.