Photo by Tes Jolly

The left beam of the bruiser buck glowed in the morning sun as it lay in one of my lush clover fields. The one beam contained 10 points. No one had seen this buck during the previous hunting season, nor had we gotten any trail pictures. The hunt was on.

My obsession began when we measured 90 inches of antler on the one shed. To fuel the excitement, Tim and I assumed that with an equal, matched shed from the right side-- total scoreable points (1 inch or more)'d1and a conservative 17-inch inside spread, the buck would gross 197 non-typical.

In the fall of 2006, I'd planted about 10 acres of Mossy Oak BioLogic's Clover Plus'd1a perennial blend of New Zealand red and white clovers and chicory'd1 in four locations. I hoped this would encourage the deer that called my place home in the fall and winter to stay year-round.

After finding the shed, my focus zoomed back to those clover fields. They had to be in superb condition. The summer months would be decisive in maintaining the buck's quality or, better yet, adding inches to his already impressive rack. This big buck would need a high-protein diet during summer'd1the antler-growing season'd1to maintain optimum physical condition and achieve maximum antler growth.

This shot, taken on 9-20-07, captures the buck shedding his velvet. This was the only image taken during daylight.

Then a drought like none we'd seen in years hit. The fields were parched. I thought hard to come up with a way to water my food plots. Perhaps I could pump water from my nearly dry ponds or dig a well or stretch a garden hose from my cabin to the fields. But those were lame ideas. I even asked the guys at the farmer's co-op if they had access to a water truck. I was desperate and nothing seemed practicable. So, like the farmers in the area, I watched the radar and prayed for an isolated thundershower. None came, but to my amazement, the Clover Plus and BioMax withstood the scorching sun. There was plenty of clover, chicory, soybeans, and later corn, to survive heavy grazing.

I was optimistic that the available food in my plots was enough to grow the buck to his potential and hold him on my property as much as you could contain a wild animal.

Still I was concerned that the stresses of struggling to survive the hot, dry summer could be more than this buck could handle. He could die from who knows what, be injured, or just not develop into the buck of a lifetime. Anything could go wrong. All we could do now was wait until fall.

The author was shocked on Sept. 8, 2007, when this trail cam photo popped up on his computer screen'd1the first taken of the huge 17-point buck.

The following weekend I collected the memory cards from the trail cameras. The first card, taken from the trail leading into the clover field where we found the shed, contained more than 500 images. I casually scrolled through the first 400 images of does and small bucks. Then image number 460 exploded onto the computer screen. I could not believe my eyes. There stood the buck of my dreams.

At 1:55 a.m. September 7, the huge buck was captured for the first time on camera. Six pictures revealed a massive rack of at least 16 points. He was a main'd0frame, typical 12-point with one extra (13th) vertical point and three additional stickers.

The shed we'd found in February was a near exact match. My enthusiasm grew exponentially. I asked myself, Could I actually have a book buck on my own place? The answer was obvious, though mind-boggling.

My kids shared the obsession. My two youngest, Mark, 23, and Jessi 19, both students at Mississippi State University, wanted a crack at the high-scoring buck. My oldest son Paul Jr., 36, simply wanted to observe his siblings pursue their dream.

The author's hunting buddy, Tim Biard, examines the shed from the B&C buck found 2-11-07. Photo by Paul T. Brown

Our strategy was to hunt the periphery of what we believed to be the buck's bedding area and home territory, which meant hunting the food plots. The topography of my property dictates staying out of the woods and makes it difficult to get close to the buck's bedding area. The steep hills and gullies have a bizarre way of sucking a hunter's scent into the bottoms and distributing it in all directions. So we didn't go into the woods to hunt or scout. The cameras did the scouting for us, and we hunted food plots. We were disciplined and resisted the temptation of entering the buck's domain.

Archery season would come and go with no sighting of the buck. The same for the first gun season. I wanted to do something to entice the buck'd1and the does'd1to feed in one field instead of all over my property. After consulting several experts, I decided to fertilize the clover field where I'd taken the most pictures of the buck'd1”the tank stand” field, named after the water-tank-shaped shoot house overlooking the four acre field. I'd never fertilized these fields in midseason and wasn'd5t sure it would work, but I was out of ideas.

On December 1, I broadcast urea, a nitrogen fertilizer, at a rate of 300 pounds per acre. Two soaking rains followed, insuring a good blend of urea into the soil.

Just before Christmas, I noticed a richer color to the clover. Deer use had picked up. Tracks and droppings covered the field. But I sat in the shoot house four evenings in late December and early January without seeing a single deer. The sign was irrefutable; deer were eating the clover, just not while anyone was hunting.

I pulled the cameras the day after Christmas. There were more pictures of the buck, all taken under the cloak of darkness. It was as if the buck was saying, “nah-nah-na, boo-boo, you can't catch me.” Everywhere I placed the cameras; he'd show up to have his picture taken. He was toying with us and really not playing fair. But, as they say, “all's fair in love and war.” Perhaps they should've added, “And avoiding hunters.” Based on the camera results, the buck didn'd5t travel far, he patrolled the clover fields'd1but only at night.

Biologist Chad Dacus and the author compare the shed found 2-11-07 to the buck taken 1-16-08. Photo by Tes Jolly

A book-signing event took me to St. Louis on January 15. A wildlife photographer friend and I had planned to photograph waterfowl for a few days in southern Illinois starting Tuesday the 16th. Rifle season in Mississippi ended on January 17, so I had pretty much given up on the buck for the season.

But my friend got the flu, and we had to cancel the photo shoot. Left with nothing to do, I headed home. On the drive back, I figured if I didn't run into any delays, I could make it back in time for one final evening in a stand. I called a hunting buddy, Johnny Granberry, from the road and invited him to join me. He consented and met me at my cabin at 3:00.

I hurriedly dressed. Johnny and I headed for our stands around 3:30. I chose a field we called “the landing strip,” a greenfield planted in a fall crop of BioLogic Green Patch Plus. The landing strip abuts the tank-stand clover field, but I wasn't going to sit in that tank stand another unproductive afternoon.

To get to the landing strip, I had to walk past the tank stand and through the clover field I'd fertilized with urea six weeks earlier. As I passed the 12-foot-high stand, I whispered “Good riddance” under my breath. Just as I reached the landing-strip shoot house, I noticed the wind was blowing consistently out of the east'd1the worst wind for that stand. I was frustrated.

The only stand that was good for an east wind was the dreaded tank stand. I thought about going home, but realized Johnny was around the corner in another stand. That seemed to be the season in a nutshell. The big boy lived a charmed life and would probably die of old age. I reluctantly climbed into the tank stand at 3:45 for one final hunt. True to form, no deer came to feed. Official sunset was 5:15, with legal shooting time over at 5:45. My watch read 5:30, and it was darker than usual for that time of the day because of low, heavy cloud cover. About five minutes later, two deer appeared in the landing, heading toward my field. I found the deer in my binoculars and thought, That's two bucks, and the one on the right is a pretty good one.

The bucks took turns servicing a scrape and limb licking about 200 yards away. I continued watching through the binoculars as the bucks entered the clover field and made a 90-degree turn to my right. “That's him!” I whispered aloud. The bucks continued walking at a steady pace as I reached for my 7mm Magnum.

I placed the crosshairs on the wrong buck at first. I became frantic as I tried to locate the big one. Finally, I found the right buck and placed the crosshairs behind his shoulder, but I was doing figure eights all over the buck's front quarter. I've never had a worse case of buck fever. All of the preparation, dreaming, and scheming was in front of me at that instant. But I was too shaky to pull the trigger. I told myself, “You have got to get hold of yourself if you are going to shoot this deer!” As the buck stood knee-deep in clover, I took a deep breath, then said a short prayer: “Lord, please guide this bullet.”

I settled the crosshairs behind the buck's shoulder and fired. He wheeled 180 degrees and went down. My emotions ran the gamut. Nearly one year after finding his shed, the buck finally made a mistake and lay in the clover field in front of me.

I climbed out of the shoot house at 5:45 and jogged over to put my hands on the monster whitetail that had eluded me all season. What a trophy! The following day, I called friend Rick Dillard, an official scorer for Boone and Crockett. He agreed to come to my place to green-score the deer.

Rick arrived around noon Thursday and began measuring. After pecking on his calculator for what seemed an eternity, Rick revealed a gross score of 192 3/8 and a net of 171 4/8. The score held after the 60-day drying period and has been accepted by Boone and Crockett. The buck becomes the first typical Boone and Crockett ever registered from Holmes County. The 17 scoreable points are the most of any typical book buck killed in Mississippi.

Did the extra fertilizer help lure the buck into the clover field that afternoon? I can't answer that with certainty. But I do believe Clover Plus not only helped hold the buck on my property, but it was responsible for the buck reaching his full potential and growing into a record-book deer.

The hunt began in early February and ended in mid January, almost one year later. Thanks to a quality deer management program, excellent perennial food plots, and a little luck, we grew a booner on a small piece of property in rural Mississippi.

Paul Brown is a best-selling author and award-winning photographer. His books include: Escape in Iraq, Church of Lies, I'm Still Standing, Conserving Wild America, Wild Visions, and others. To learn more about Paul's work, go to www.trueexposures.com