Contender was a buck that got his name because of potential. I can assure you he will be referred to for years to come as an example of what a buck is able to do from one year to the next. Along with Inside Crabclaw that was killed in 2010. My first photo of Contender was in August of 2010 across the highway. I wrote in my blog that I hoped he was a three year old. The amazing reality was that he was only a two year old. It wasn't until after the 2010 season that I realized I had pictures of him as a yearling in 2009 by John's bins.
Then in the summer of 2010:
He was a clean 10 point buck and another neighbor had gotten a few pictures of him in October, but I never really expected him to venture our way. I picked him up on a camera I left set up near the creek by John's south end on November 7th after dark. Then, to my surprise, we got a photo of him NW of the bus in the tail end of the rut in November.
We got him once more up there in mid December and watched him venture back west over to the standing bean field. We got several pictures of him over there in the last half of the month of December.
As 2011 came, I was determined to focus my energies on the bucks closest to The Hill so I kept my cameras there throughout the summer. I really had a struggle to get good bucks on camera. I suggested to a friend to put a camera up across the highway where I did before and sure enough within a week he had four nice bucks coming in - Whitey, PegLeg, Junky Brewster, and Contender. I decided to move one of my cameras in there in order to get better quality images of these bucks and hopefully get a picture of Curly or Skyscraper. Well, I got some great images of the first four, but there was no sightings of either of the older bucks. These four bucks were in those soybeans all summer long. I eventually pulled my camera from there and gave up on getting photos of Curly or Skyscraper.
September and October were fruitless as far as pictures went. At least that was the case until I got back from Whitewater. I checked my camera NW of the bus on the 3rd of November and got some great pictures of Bullwinkle and one awesome picture of Contender out of velvet at 2 in the afternoon on November 1st!
The bucks weren't really using the scrapes near the top of the hill too much so I moved a camera to the east side of John's farmyard that same day (the 3rd) and boy am I glad I did. That very next morning I got four pictures of Contender working that scrape.
My friend checked his camera that he set up by his stand which was north of the landing and got a picture of Contender on the 30th of October. So we were putting some pieces together. Opening day of rifle season came on November 5th and hope were high of seeing Contender. We all tried to play the wind right to hunt our best stands. My friend chose to stay out of his stand where he had the picture of Contender because the wind was wrong. He made a good decision. On Monday the 7th, I was sitting NW of the bus and my friend was sitting in his stand north of the landing. We had a perfect west wind and at about 8:30 am, my friend texts me saying that he just missed a chance at a buck he thinks was Contender. I thought he was full of it but decided to climb down at about 10:30 and see what was up. He pulled his memory card from his camera and we went to see what was on it. Sure enough. There he was! 90 yards away from his stand, Contender slipped through a shooting lane because my friend was looking the other way. It only takes 3 seconds. Wow. Needless to say, he felt pretty crappy. After that, we had no pictures and heard nothing about Contender until Sunday morning in church I talked to Paul Krahn who said he talked to Eric Douglas and that Eric had shot a nice buck. Paul was trying to get a photo out of him. Tuesday morning I climbed up in the stand by the spring and got an email as I was getting set up. It was from Paul. "Let me know if you recognize this deer." I opened the attachment and there he lay - Contender was dead. It's such an odd rush of emotions.
I'm super happy for Eric, but at the same time, this is one of those genetic anomalies that only happens once a year - if that. Now his genes are done being passed on. At least he made it to the end of the season and hopefully he was able to breed. I eventually went over to Eric's house to score the rack and take some photos. If he had not broken his left brow tine, he would have grossed over 151" as a three year old. He would have net somewhere around 146". Since he did break his brow, he grossed 147" and net about 138".
The amount of growth that can take place on some deer is absolutely incredible. Contender passed away on November 10th at 7:30am. Eric said he was following a doe and came in to about 30 yards. Typical YOUNG deer. No fear.
What makes some strains of genetics superior if all of these deer have roughly the same nutrition/cover/minerals? If Contender would have had one more year, I would guess that he would have grossed B&C and been a typical 12 with matching stickers off his G2s. I guess we'll never know.
This year there seems to be two different two year old bucks that have some potential. They both inhabit that same area. There's something about the creek that must have something these deer need. Maybe if I can connect the dots of soil content I might figure out why the create this elliptical pattern.
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