king' s outdoor world - Index

king' s outdoor world - Best of 2007 Feb-March 2008 - Index

68
Spanning 37 7/8-inches wide, the Kyle Lopez buck has been green scored at
307 7/8 gross and 303 5/8 net B&C with 100 7/8-inches of total abnormal points
we immediately found blood and
tracked him about fi fty feet. The
buck was in a small ditch. As we
were approaching, it appeared as if
he had fallen into an old dead bush.
My dad made it to the buck fi rst. He
told me to get my gun ready. My
heart was pumping. I could see the
grey color of his body as dad picked
up a rock and tossed it toward the
buck’s belly. As the rock hit and
bounced off the buck’s body Dad
exclaimed, “He’s done Kyle.” This
is where my luck took an enormous
turn for the better. As I was securing
my gun, I heard my dad say, “Oh,
my.” He just kept saying, “Oh my,
Oh my,” over and over. Neither one
HUNTING ILLUSTRATED.com
of us was prepared for what we found
lying at our feet. We assumed that we
had shot a good buck, but never in our
wildest dreams had we known that he
was this good. As I stood next to my
dad looking at the buck, there were so
many points coming off his antlers that
it looked like the bush that he had fallen
into had overtaken him. His horns were
heavy and it seemed like there were
hundreds of points going in all different
directions. From this point forward
there would be no words to describe this
buck - none that anyone would believe
anyway without seeing it with their own
eyes. Dad gave me a big hug. We had
several high fi ves. There is just no way
to explain the excitement and emotion
COLORA RA R DO
of what we were looking at. Dad
said that we needed to get to work
on him right away because we had
just brought the bare minimum and
we needed to get to the truck to
get photos of the buck before light
faded.
We dressed out the buck
and got him ready to go. We still
had a long three-mile hike out to
the truck. We started off on top
of a ridge, but soon the ridge died
out and we bailed off into a nasty
drainage. The drainage was littered
with many deadfalls of burnt timber
arranged in a tangled mess. Light
was beginning to fade and we could
only drag the buck a hundred yards at
a time. Then, we would have to stop
to clear out another hundred yards.
This process seemed to take forever
as darkness was now upon us. The
excitement of the hunt began to
rapidly wear off because of the work
that had to be done to fi nd an easy
path to drag this monstrous deer out.
What seemed like an easy decision
at fi rst, to leave the deer whole so
that we could get photographs, now
seemed to be fading as fast as the
light was. Those three miles were
the longest of my life but, as I look
back, it was worth every bit of it.
We had shot the deer around 4:30
p.m. and didn’t get back to the truck
until 7:30 p.m. As we got the deer
to the back of the pickup, we looked
up and saw a car traveling down the
road towards us. The vehicle slowed
as my dad had his parking lights on.