The Alpha Buck

This story begins about a year and a half ago when my wife and purchased a little piece of land not far from the center of Alpharetta, Georgia. Since then, I’ve continued to run trail cams on the property and seen nothing but does; honestly, it’s kind of crazy that not even one small buck has shown up in over a year. In early December, that all changed.

On Wednesday, December 4, an absolute bruiser that I now called the Alpha Buck decided to grace us with his presence. He showed up at midnight in my upper field and then daylighted at 7:15 a.m. that next morning. Naturally, the daylight photos instantly got me fired up… but what really got me going was when my security camera caught him walking down the driveway at noon. I knew then it was on.

That evening, I went over to the property for an afternoon sit. It’s now 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, December 5, and like clockwork he came right in to feed. I smoked him at 30 yards. Broadside, full pass through, a tad back and a little high but surely a fatal shot. Well… This is where the story gets interesting.

Knowing I made solid contact, I backed out and gave the deer a few hours. I came back later with a handful of my buddies who were ready to track, recover and celebrate. Or so we thought. We had really good blood for about 50 yards and then the trail just vanished. This was when I first started feeling uneasy. We looked for this deer for two hours in the small patch of woods. At this point I called everybody off and set up a bloodhound to come in the next morning.

It’s now the morning of Friday, December 6. Me and a handful of other buddies, the dog, and his trainer tirelessly looked all day and had nothing to show for it. I was gutted. I had calls out to city works, the game wardens, the local police department and dozens of neighbors. Anybody who I thought may get word of a dead deer heard from me.

At this point, I was in Hail Mary mode when someone referred me to Jordan McDonald with “Seekin’ Whitetails.” He was able to immediately bring up his thermal drone to help locate the buck. First of all, if you haven’t used a thermal drone before to locate a deer, it’s almost a cheat code. When looking for a deer in a residential area like this, it’s an absolute must. After about 30 minutes of looking at different fingers of woods, we found him a half mile away on his feet acting like nothing had happened. Feeding, walking, rubbing trees, everything. It was gut wrenching. I still thought that he might die so I set up Jordan to come back out Saturday night.

Fast forward 24 hours, its now December 7, same scenario—the buck was still alive. But this time he had made his way back that whole half mile and was bedded down in the thick stuff on my neighbor’s property. Obviously when he’s bedded down, you can’t tell if he’s sick or not, but he sure wasn’t acting like it.

That night he showed up back in my field again and fed for 20 minutes. You can clearly see in the photo where the entrance wound was. Not a perfect shot by any means but that deer should have died 100 times over. Not only was he not dead, but he also wasn’t even acting sick or walking with a limp. Just a brute of a buck. At least at this point I knew he was in the area and had hopes that he would stay around. Starting Sunday morning, I was back to hunting him.

After no action on a frigid Sunday full day sit, I was pretty deflated. That night, the buck showed back up again at midnight, 3:30 a.m. and then again at 4:30 a.m. Naturally I was back to positive thoughts. With him showing up so much that evening I was convinced that he had to be bedded down in the area. I decided to do another full day sit on Monday, and boy did it pay off.

Around 4:15 p.m., I had my first action of the day. A mama doe and her fawn made their way down my driveway and into my upper field. As soon as they got back there, they triggered a response from the big boy who I believe was likely bedded down just feet off my property. When he made his way up the hill, my heart was pounding. Looking back now, I was fortunate that he came in at an angle where he was positioned directly facing me. He stood there and fed for 10 minutes without changing position. That 10-minute period gave me a chance to settle the nerves and put a perfect shot on him as soon as he went broadside.

Instead of tracking, I immediately called Jordan to come bring the drone so I would know exactly where he was, and we didn’t have to cross multiple property lines searching. About 10 minutes after the shot I got a call from one of the other property owners whose brother had been hunting him as well and was told that he was dead in their yard. That sucker didn’t go far this time!

In some of these pictures you can see a massive scar going down his back. I believe he was either shot once prior, or he got his butt whipped by another buck at a younger age. With all the cool detail on this buck, I’ve decided to do a full body mount that will highlight both my shots as well as the scar. The Alpha Buck is truly a once in a lifetime deer for me and I’m ecstatic to close the book on this one.