Killed him on Cheaha Mountain on between Munford and Cheaha State Park. This buck also happened to be my first public land deer, as well as my largest buck to date. Lots of scouting and planning went into this deer and it payed off at the end of the day.

Nice congrats. Gotta feel good when it all pays off

Congrats. You got to tell us the story of finding the deer and hunting him.

Congrats !!!!STORY PLEASE !!!

The area of national forest land that I killed him on borders some land that has been in my family for a long time. I've hunted there several times a year with very little success. I'd only seen a handful of deer in the past 6 or 7 years. I had honestly written the place off when it came to deer hunting. Since I am currently in school at Auburn I had a few weeks off for Christmas break. Besides doing several things for my dad and a few other people, I had a fair amount of time to hunt over the break. A week before the break started I bought my first trail camera. I thought it would be interesting to see what kind of deer (if any) we had on our farm and up on the mountain. For some reason I decided to put the camera out on the national forest land for its first trial run. I picked out the spot to put the camera at when I noticed where a large flock of turkeys had been scratching. It took 7 days for me to get a deer on camera. Several does came in on the 7th night that the camera was out, so I was excited just to see that there were several deer up there. on the 10th day I got my first buck on camera.


I was ecstatic because this buck is considered by many to be a solid buck killed in the Talladega National Forest. I knew that he must have been roaming because he only visited that one time at night. Several days later I decided that I was going to move the camera in the direction that he was coming from in hopes of getting closer to where he was bedding so that I might get a picture of him during the day. Before I did that I decided to leave the camera there one more day. On the 14th night I had the camera out, I got the first pictures of this buck.



Those pictures definitely shocked me. I thought he was a great deer, but I didn't really know how wide or symmetrical he was because I only got pictures of one side of his face. I also figured that since he was coming through at night he was strictly nocturnal, and I had no real chance of harvesting him. I kept the camera in there simply to try to get more pictures of him and on the 20th day of having the camera in that spot I got a very pleasant surprise when I stuck the memory card in my mac.

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I knew after I saw the pictures of him coming in there in broad daylight, I had a good shot to harvest him. I figured that he had to be close by to be coming in there at broad daylight, because he didn't get that big by moving a lot during the day. So through several educated (lucky) assumptions I decided that he was coming from a pine thicket just across the creek to get a mid-morning snack and drink. Due to the fact that I was unable to get the time stamp to work on my camera, I wasn't exactly sure what time he was coming in. I simply guessed that it was mid to late morning. After a week of rain, I decided that I would go in there the first chance I got to hunt when the wind was right. I went and sat on the ridge above where he was traveling, just 30 yards away from the trail due to the fact that there is lots of undergrowth and brush in this particular area. I sat one morning and one afternoon and got soaked both times I sat without seeing any life form at all. After several days in a row of rain, the weather finally cleared up and cooled off significantly. I'd decided that I was going to sit every possible day at this point in hopes that deer would slip up and come out in broad daylight again. On January 2nd, I got into the woods at 5:30 AM and sat up against an old log 30 yards from the bucks travel route. At 7 AM I heard a shot ring out several hundred yards from me. My heart sank because I thought that lucky hunter down the creek from me had killed the big buck. I heard the hunter crank his four-wheeler up and drive right up to his deer, load it up, then proceed to drive off. At this point I seriously considered getting up and walking back to my truck, but I convinced myself that I better sit a few hours longer just in case that hunter hadn't killed the big buck I'd gotten on camera. I had originally told myself that I was going to get up at 9. I was extremely stiff from sitting still on the ground for 3 1/2 hours when 9 finally came, but I thought I'd sit another 15 minutes just to be sure. At 9:01 AM I saw the body of a deer, but couldn't tell if it was a doe or buck. He finally lifted his head and showed himself. He must have been very close because I didn't hear him walk in on the trail at all. He drank water for several minutes then proceeded to walk down the trail directly in front of me. I didn't realize it at the time, but the wind had shifted into his direction in the last minute or so. He was about to walk into a shooting window when he came to an abrupt halt as if he knew something wasn't right. He took one step forward then stuck his nose straight up in the air, curled his top lip and tried to wind whatever smell had caught his attention. By this time I'd found him in my scope with a hole in the underbrush to shoot through. I pulled the trigger and dropped him initially. The buck attempted to get up, but fell back into the creek he drank out of when he tried to jump it. A little preparation and a lot of luck helped me harvest this awesome buck. I'll be lucky to ever kill another public land buck like this one in my lifetime. Sorry if I went a little overboard, but you guys said you wanted the story.

Great buck. Wallpaper

Congratulations!

Nice buck! I grew up in that part of the state and hunted Cheaha Mtn area quite a bit. You rarely get an easy one there. Congrats on a good hunt and thanks for sharing your story.

Great story, congrats on a great public land buck!

Awesome deer and story!! Hard work paid off for sure

Great buck, and story! Congratulations

Good hunting, congrats!

Great buck.

Congrats buddy

Congrats! Nice buck!

Great buck and story!!