Wade was hunting with Cody Durham, his 14-year-old grandson. The two were in Climax tree stands, about 40 yards apart in a wood lot. Wade's grandson actually saw the big buck before Wade did -- and he saw another buck just as big, if not bigger, slip into the wood lot a few minutes behind the first one.

When Wade saw the first buck, he was flabbergasted. First, the buck's antlers were a deep brown, so he thought the deer was still in full velvet. And, of course, the rack was stunning.

"I've never seen a buck like that before -- never one even close," Wade said. "I had no idea he was around here. When I first saw him, I thought he was a mule deer. I thought, You're not supposed to be here."

Wade made him pay for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Shooting a PSE Polar Express bow, Wade, who is left-handed, slipped an Easton XX75 arrow and Land Shark broadhead cleanly through the buck's side. "When I let it go, I heard a pop, so I knew I'd hit him good," Wade said. "He started stumbling away, took off, then I heard him fall. There was a limb that he fell on, and you could hear it crash.

"We didn't see him fall, but we heard him," said Wade, who was hunting within sight of his grandson -- who watched the entire episode. "We stayed up in our stands until after dark, because I was hoping that Cody would get a shot. Then, we got down and went and found him."

The buck carried not only an impressive rack, but a huge body as well. "We started dragging him, and he was so big we'd drag him a few feet and have to stop," said Wade, whose grandson made a cell-phone call to a friend and arranged to take the buck to a store near the town of King -- a store that was running a big-buck contest. "We finally got him out of there and took him up there, and there were about 15 people waiting to see him."

One was Joey Thompson, a scorer for the N.C. Bowhunters Association, who put a measuring tape on the buck that night and came up with green scores of 156 4/8 non-typical and 145 2/8 typical. When he rescored the buck after the required 60-day drying period, it scored 141 points. The buck, which carried a 5x4 typical frame with two sticker points on the left antler, had already shed all of its velvet.

The buck had an inside spread of 17 1/4 inches, brow tines that measured 6 1/2 and 5 1/4 inches, and two tines longer than 10 inches: 11 5/8 and 10 2/8. The deer's rack was massive -- close to 5 inches in circumference around the bases and 4 inches all the way out to the antler tips. Its main beams were 25 3/8 and 24 2/8 inches long. The two sticker points on the left antler were 2 2/8 and 2 6/8 inches long.

And the deer's body was almost as impressive as its rack. Wade didn't have a set of scales on which to weigh the buck, but Thompson and another veteran hunter estimated that the buck could have weighed as much as 230 to 240 pounds on the hoof -- close to 200 pounds field dressed.

"It took Jerrold, his two grandsons and his son-in-law to put it in the back of his pickup truck," Thompson said. "A deer that size is rare, especially early in bow season before he's been in the acorns for a while and put on some more weight."

The land that Wade was hunting was a mixture of planted pines, hardwoods and a half-acre food plot he'd planted. He and his grandson set up in some oaks close to the pines and food plot, with their portable tree stands about 40 yards apart -- so Wade could keep an eye on the teen-aged hunter.

Opening day, like many during the early part of archery season, was oppressively hot, but the weather started to change as darkness closed in, with the wind kicking up and clouds rolling in. Wade remembers hearing some rustling in the leaves to one side of his stand, and when he turned to investigate the sound, the buck was 30 yards away, feeding on the plentiful white oak acorns right along with the squirrels.

Wade had to take his bow down from its rack, but he was able to wait until the deer moved behind a tree. When it came out, he was ready -- a little too ready.

"There was an opening in front of him, but I knew if he got in the opening, seeing his antlers would affect me too much," he said. "There was a hole where I could see him, where his antlers were covered up, and I could get a shot at his shoulder through the hole."

Wade, who shoots instinctively -- without pins or sights -- let fly as soon as his sight picture looked right and he got to full draw.

"Cody said the other buck that was with him, when I shot mine, he took off in the other direction," he said. "But I never saw him. My buck was the only one I was paying attention to."

When he and Cody got to the big buck, he was every bit as big as Wade had guessed when he first saw him. "To me, he looks perfect. I've never seen anything like him," he said. "I've hunted this place for seven years, and I've seen some good deer. I hadn't seen any sign in there to tell me he was there; there were no rubs anywhere -- and he didn't have any velvet left on his antlers."

Wade believes that the big buck may have been living on another piece of property, but when the white oak acorns began to fall, he changed his habits and travels and started working in Wade's hardwoods.

He's hoping the second buck, the "bigger" buck that his grandson saw, returns this season. The wood lot must have something going for him because Cody killed a nice buck there later, during gun season, from the same stand in which he was sitting when Wade struck gold.