With his Matthews Outback compound at full draw, Ellington considered his options. He could have let the string back down or tried to wait the buck out at full draw being possibilities, but instead Ellington did what he thought would get him a good shot -- he bent his knees and squatted down about 18 inches, which put the offending limb totally out of the picture.

"It was an awkward shot, but it was the only one I had," he said.

The Gold Tip arrow and three-blade, 100-grain Muzzy broadhead zoomed toward the buck, and Ellington felt like he'd made a decent shot, even if it may have been a few inches farther back than he'd have liked.

"I shot, and I heard a 'thump' when the arrow hit, then he just trotted out of the field. I thought I might have gut shot him. I never heard him crash down, so I stayed up in the stand until dark," Ellington said. "Then I went down and found my arrow. It had gone straight through him and was sticking up out of the ground. It didn't have any blood on it, and there was no blood around, but it had this kind of clear liquid on it -- from the broadhead to the feathers."

Ellington decided there was no point in looking for the buck that night. He went back to his truck and drove home. "I wasn't going to pressure him," Ellington said. "I told my wife I was going to wait until the next morning, a Sunday morning. I got up at 7:30, took my dog out there, and I went right back to where the arrow was, then I walked to where he'd gone back in the woods, and there was no blood there. So, I just started easing back into the woods.

"My dog, he'd never trailed anything before, but he started smelling along with his nose on the ground, and I just followed him. I was watching out to the left and right of him, but when we got about 50 yards back in the woods, I looked up ahead, right over his nose, and I saw the deer. He was bedded down, up against a pine tree, with his legs up underneath him, and his head had fallen over to the side.

"When I got to him, I was really tickled, because I'd never killed anything of any size with my bow before," Ellington said. "When I shot him, I didn't think he was any more than 16 or 17 inches wide, because he'd never looked at me straight on. I knew he had good tines, but I had no idea he was that wide. In fact, when I called my wife, I told her I thought I'd killed a decent deer -- nothing better."

The big buck carried a 20-inch inside spread. The longest tine was 11 inches; it had another 10 1/2 and two more 9 inches long or better. The main beams were 26 1/2 and 24 1/8 inches long, the brow tines both 6 1/2 inches long, and the circumference of each antler at the base just 1/8th of an inch short of 6 inches. The buck weighed 176 pounds on the hoof.

"Everything just fell into place for me," Ellington said. "He didn't smell me, the other deer didn't spook, he never looked up at me. And I never dreamed he'd come all the way across the field. But I think those deer were eating beans, feeding across the field to those white oaks."

Later in the season, Ellington wound up killing a beautiful buck on another Rockingham County farm with his muzzleloader, a buck he estimates will score in the 130s. That leaves the big 10-pointer that Braxton saw for next year.

"My buddy, Dwayne Smith, who is a highway patrolman up here, he found the (2005) shed a couple of weeks after I'd shot my bow deer," he said. "It was huge; it had a fork like a mule deer on the first point. I hope I see him next season."

Ellington said that the broadhead managed to miss the lungs, the liver, the paunch or any other vital organs, but he thinks that it clipped a major artery -- even though he didn't have a blood trail to work with. The buck ran only 135 yards before he died -- 60 yards to the edge of the field and another 75 yards back in the woods.

Wade's trophy buck only made it 50 yards from the spot where it was arrowed in a Stokes County wood lot at about 6:45 p.m. on the opening afternoon of archery season, Sept. 9.