Sorry for the length...
In December of 2005', I decided I'd take advantage of my 2 hour lunch break from the college and decided to take a hike near my house to see what I could find. I knew that a big buck had typically wintered in the area but I'd never seen him... I topped a ridge and this is what I saw...
At this point my class was still 45 minutes out, but I decided that this buck was much more important! After a few hours of photo'in him and keeping my distance, I nodded goodbye and knew I'd be back... 3 times a week I'd be up trying to figure out this bucks patterns. He was pretty predictable, staying in this one canyon but occasionally he would wander out and I could only guess as to his nocturnal habits... December ended, and rolled into January, and January faded in February... By this time, I'd been talking with friends and they too knew the buck personally after pickin up the NT side from the previous year, aswell as the matching set the year before. As February wound down and March was fast approaching, atleast one of our group was watching the buck I'd say 4-5 days a week...
A monday in March came and went and after talking with a buddy, I found out the buck had dropped. He'd scouted him on Sunday evening and then again on Monday morning in the same spot and he was bald... The next 4 or 5 weeks was pretty stressful. After scouring this one canyon and the surrounding canyons 5-6 days a week, we were stumped. The sheds were nowhere to be seen, but fresh horse tracks led us to believe that someone else had picked them up.
With the sheds out of mind and thought to have been lost, I called a friend (Thanks Shad!) and we scheduled a trip to my buddie's uncle's place (Garret, I'm sure your very familiar with the area!) to hunt some bone. The morning was pretty fruitless with only a two point and spike found, but we decided to drop down near the orchards and hunt there. We immediately started finding more sheds and Shad even found a nice 4 point. The last trip back to the truck we decided to drop down into the last orchard block and see what we could find... again a few small 3 points were found, and as we neared the truck, I spotted something ahead, I called to Shad and said I'd found a shed! He reply was "Ya I see it!" so after getting close to the shed Shad blurted out "Where you going, its down a bit" but he'd spotted a small 3 point 10 yards down, as I reached down to pick up the massive 4 point a surprised "Holy *censored*!" escaped his mouth...
I'd found one side of our buck! We immediately started searching in circles and even going up higher on the hillside (I'm sprinting up it cause I was so excited!) after 20 minutes of searching we'd come up with nothing... We figured that the buck had at night crossed the road, and had followed a slight game trail down through my buddies property up to the orchard and dropped his horn... after dropping our packs at the truck, we got on that trail and shad soon spotted the NT side right by the horse fence! Apparently the buck had jumped the fence and dropped one side, then fed up to the orchard and dropped the other side... man what a relief! After months of watching the buck, and by pure luck we had discovered the set!
After help from a MM.com member, we had them scored at 190" with a 21" inside spread... He's a 5x7 with the NT side being palmated on his back fork, with a 7" inline and a 3" kicker off of the palmation aswell...
Sadly enough, the buck was supposedly spotted the last day of the General season by a MM.com member but never showed up on the winter range. We estimated him around 9-10 years old the winter that I photo'd him because they were people that had seen him as a mature buck for 4 consecutive years... He had regressed from the year prior because the NT side my friend has from the year before is MUCH more massive with much bigger 'guardes, aswell as heavier palmation and larger cheaters...
Hope you enjoyed the story...
Michael
