Over many days of hunting a public mountain in Virginia this year Nick Dean had only seen three deer. But one of them was a giant whitetail buck he’d played cat-and-mouse with for multiple seasons.
“I had some trail camera photos of him, and on October 27 I had the buck at 40 yards, but it was too thick to shoot,” Dean tells Outdoor Life. “He was following a doe, and I just couldn’t slip an arrow through the cover to take him with my crossbow – so I passed the shot.”
Dean was understandably frustrated that he’d missed his chance at the buck he’d been after for four years. The public hunting area is steep, rocky, difficult to access, and there are not as many deer compared to other areas of Virginia.
“But in clubs I hunt I can only take one buck, and the challenge of taking a mountain buck is hard to resist,” says Dean, who works for an excavating company. “I like hunting the mountains and I’ve been doing it there for 20 years. While there are not as many deer as some other places in the state, there are some big bucks.”
Dean had another chance to take the giant buck a couple years ago during the muzzleloader season. But his black-powder rifle malfunctioned and misfired — again failing to capitalize on a close call with the buck.
But on Oct. 28, the afternoon after he saw the buck this year, Dean climbed 2.5 miles up the mountain once again to try for the whitetail. He decided to climb a tree at a different location on the trail where he’d seen the buck the prior day.
“It was about mid-afternoon when I got where I wanted to hunt, because I had to work that morning,” he says. “I found a couple trails about 100 yards from where I’d seen the buck the previous day, and I climbed up about 15 feet in a super thick area.”
Through his afternoon and evening hunt Dean heard squirrels chattering and scampering through leaves. He turned when he heard something behind him about 5:30 p.m. and when he looked he spotted the buck standing in a thick growth of mountain laurel.
“All I could see was his rack,” he says. “I pushed the safety off my Ravin crossbow, and when he heard that he looked right at me. He stared at me without moving for about a minute, but it seemed like hours.
“Then he put his head down, took a few steps into an opening. I raised my crossbow, put the scope crosshairs behind his shoulder, and pulled the trigger.”
The buck whirled and took off into a massive thicket of mountain laurel cover. Dean heard the deer plowing through the vegetation, then it became quiet.
“I wasn’t very confident, and when I climbed down with my stand I went to where he stood,” Dean says. “I found just a little blood, but no arrow. I called a few friends, and my dad, and a buddy who knew where I was hunting said he would be there as quickly as possible.”
His friend got there after dark, but with lights they found a slight blood trail leading into very thick cover.
“It was so thick we almost stepped on my deer,” Dean says. “The buck only went about 65 yards from where I’d shot it. But in the laurel cover you can’t see anything.”
His 100-grain Beast expandable two-blade broadhead had been plenty lethal, piercing both lungs and the buck’s heart.
“There was no dragging the deer anywhere in that laurel and steep rocky area,” Dean says. “We dressed and quartered the buck and packed him out like it was a Western hunt for elk.”
Dean estimates his 17-point buck weighed about 180 pounds, live weight. He will have the deer aged by a state official. But he believes it’s perhaps 7.5 years old, and the same one he’d been after for years in that specific mountain area.
“There aren’t that many deer in that region, and even fewer big bucks,” he says. “In my mind, it had to be the same buck I’d chased for four years.”
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Dean says when his taxidermist was caping the buck for mounting, he found a wound on its neck. Dean believes that confirms his belief the buck is the same deer he’d chased for so many seasons.
“Last year I was walking in to hunt and I jumped a doe, and behind it at 60 yards was the buck,” Dean says. “I shot at it as it faced me, and I was convinced I missed. But the slight flesh wound on the side of its neck found when it was caped, proves to me it was that same buck. My arrow must have grazed its neck.”
No official measurements of the buck have been made, but eventually Dean will have it scored by Buckmasters.