Experience: Missing Dad’s Big Eight

He said, “I’d love to, Dad, if I can find the time
You see my new job’s a hassle and kids have the flu
But it’s sure nice talking to you, Dad
It’s been sure nice talking to you”

Harry Chapin

My family isn’t from Texas…we’re from North Carolina and Georgia, but I’ve now lived in the state half of my life. When my parents decided to purchase property in East Texas, I was ecstatic at the opportunity to not only have a place to hunt, but to have a place to spend time with my parents and bring my own wife and children so they could get a small taste of growing up in a rural area.

I grew up in Mint Hill, North Carolina, a small town outside of Charlotte. If you visited Mint Hill today, you wouldn’t know the town I knew. Today, Highway 51 runs right through town turning what was once a small town on the outskirts know as the home of the “Mint Hillbillies” into a thriving hotspot for new development.

When we moved to Mint Hill, I had free reign to roam the woods with my siblings and friends, building forts and shooting squirrels with our pellet guns. My personal favorite pasttime was digging old coke bottles off the fenceline glass dumps of nearby farms and homesteads. This freedom was formative in my desire to be in the outdoors. I wanted the same for my kids, who were being reared in the suburbs of Dallas/Fort Worth.

My parents purchase of the property in East Texas was a Godsend in terms of how my wife and I planned to raise our children. It was also a unique opportunity for my dad and I to build something together. As soon as they closed on the property, we began to make plans to develop it into an outdoorsman’s paradise, teeming with bass and deer.

Upon purchase, the property was probably 90% wooded, mostly with white pines with some small hardwood stands dispersed within, so it was difficult to immediately understand the wildlife the property already held. As we slowly implemented our management plan, the wildlife started to show. The first pictures we caught were of a family group of does. Shortly thereafter, we began to see some bucks.

In December of 2015, we got our first picture of the deer we found ourselves chasing for the next four years. You’d think we would have given him a name like they do on TV, but we didn’t…but if we were talking about “the one”, we just knew the deer being referred to.

He might not look like a monster if you are use to seeing the high-fenced behemoths from around the state, but through our eyes on our smaller, low-fenced, East Texas property, he was a big Eight and he was growing.

Like most big deer, he rarely showed up on camera, and if he did, it likely wasn’t during shooting hours. It was clear he didn’t live on the property, but likely traveled to the property during the rut to breed the family group of does. When we didn’t catch a clearly identified picture of him on camera in 2016, we felt he hadn’t survived the East Texas rifle season.

In 2017, much to our surprise, he showed up again, clearly identified by his distinctive rack. He also picked up a distinghishable “nick” in his right ear. We periodically saw him through the 2017 and 2018 seasons, but found no discernible pattern to where and when he travelled.

Thanks to Browning clearing out their older Strikeforce line at Academy, we placed some video cameras around the property and caught by far my favorite trail camera footage of him entering the property and posing for the camera upon hearing it trigger. What took me about him was chocolate bases on his antlers. We wanted to get on this deer, but had all but conceded he was a “ghost”.

In October of 2019, for the first time, we started catching him pretty regularly on camera. My sits in the stand were few and far between with the responsibilities of young children, but dad committed himself to sitting in the stand often that season. He had one encounter that saw the deer pass through a small window on a trail only long enough to frustrate you can question if you should give up hunting. The

The rut was over and the 2019 season was winding down. Dad called me up and asked if I wanted to go hunting the weekend of December 14th and 15th. With Christmas approaching and preparationns to be made, I passed.

I still regret passing that day. At 8:04am, I received an email from my dad…no subject, just the picture below. Dad had finally taken down the buck. At 81 degrees, it was I believe the hottest day of the month. Dad was sitting in a ground blind, likely regretting his decision to sit in the heat, when the youngest of the does that live on the property moved anxiously by the blind at 15 yards…birddoggin’ her path was the large buck. Dad dropped him and the four year quest was finished.

Dad didn’t even get a hero shot with the deer. He simply drug it out and took it to the processor. His mount has since come back, but I get a bittersweet feeling when I see the deer. I wanted to be there to share in the joy of accomplishing something that was four years in the making, but I wasn’t.