The Black Buck?

I stopped along a county road to talk with a high school classmate who's now a neighbor to our cabin. We started talking about him buying a new bow and whatever else, and inevitably got to talking about this year's hunting season. I told him about the buck I shot and he asked if I had heard anything about the 'monster' that was sighted on top of the hill. I had heard some vague details from another friend, but I was eager to hear more. He started talking about a 'black deer'. From the way he described it, it wasn't really black, but as dark of a deer as one had ever seen. I know there is such a thing as a black-looking deer, which of course is a pigment issue, similar to calico, piebald, or albino.

The odds of there being a truly black deer are pretty insane, but it is possible. I've gotten a couple picture of fawns/yearling does with a black patch on the top of its head, but that's it. Anyway, he went on telling me that a year and a half earlier, while farming a few miles west, he saw a really big buck that he nearly mistook for a bear. He said it was the biggest buck he had ever seen.

Whenever you hear those words from someone, you usually take them with a big grain of salt, but this friend of mine has seen, shot, and been around a lot of pope and young-150's type bucks and I had no choice but to take him seriously. I would guess this buck to be in the 160+ catagory, which is rare up here unless a healthy buck can live to 6 or 7 years old.

After that he started talking about a big buck he had seen by pete's. Tall tines. "at least a foot" he said. To me, that said, "Clown". He also saw him in the summer time by John's. It's getting a little easier to piece some of these bucks together. Patterning big bucks around such big woods, is tough to make an understatement. I'm learning a lot about my own naivity regarding the possible home and seasonal ranges of some of these older bucks. We've gotten lots on camera in the spring up in the big woods. At some point in the middle of June, they all vanished. I need to pick spots out in the fields, get permission, and set up trophy rocks, etc to capture some of these nomads. I am putting together some ideas of travel routes of these older age class bucks. The creek is becoming more and more important as I understand the need for water. It connects the dots.

As far as a black buck goes, one can only hope that a trail camera will locate the giant. If he survives this winter.