"I heard him coming, saw him jump the fence," he said. "I didn't judge him to be as big as he was; I thought he was about 20 inches wide -- and I didn't see the extra tine.

"After I first saw him, I didn't look at his horns anymore. I was looking for a place where I could shoot him. I leave some limbs on my trees above and below the stand because I don't want it to look like I've got my stand on a telephone pole."

Even though both bucks were downwind of Mabrey, they didn't seem to notice him. He was wearing a "fresh earth" cover scent and had sprayed his clothes down the previous night with Scent Shield Carbon Blast. He was wearing a camo "bug suit" -- and to keep insects from being a problem, he had ThermaCELL repellant.

The bigger buck moved a couple of times, each time causing the 8-pointer to jump. Then, Mabrey found a hole about 3 feet wide where he could shoot the buck broadside, and he let fly from 13 yards with the Jennings Carbon Extreme bow that he'd gotten from his hunting buddy, Brad Barnes.

"When I shot, he ran like he wasn't hit, then he ran back the way he came from about 25 or 30 yards and stopped -- but it didn't sound like he fell," he said.

Mabrey was confident enough in his shot, however, that when he climbed down out of his stand, 10 minutes later, he headed in the opposite direction, toward the hunting clubhouse, where he called Barnes.

"It had rained, and I told him I hoped it had rained enough that he couldn't do any waterproofing, because I needed him to help me find a big deer," Mabrey said.

At about 9:30, Mabrey and Barnes went into the woods where the buck had disappeared. They hadn't gone very far when they found about an 18-inch section of Mabrey's arrow shaft, an Easton 2314XX, which had broken off when the buck ran past a sapling. A little farther along the blood trail, which was consistent if not particularly heavy, Mabrey said, the pair walked into a grassy opening. Barnes saw the buck first, on the far side of the opening, lying in reed mash.

"Brad said, 'There he is,' and you could see him on the ground, his chest moving up and down. When we got to him, I about told Brad that he had to shoot him with my bow, because I was shaking so hard," Mabry said. "But I went up to him and shot him again, and he rolled over on his back, kicked a little, and he was dead in another minute or two."

And oh, what a buck it was. The deer weighed 175 pounds on the hoof, and biologists Osborne and Seamster both judged the deer at 5 1/2 years of age based on tooth wear on the lower jawbone.

Because he was shooting at such a sharp angle downward, Barnes had put his arrow just above the buck's near shoulder, and it angled down, the 125-grain, three-bladed Satellite broadhead coming to rest in the off shoulder. When the buck broke off the part of the shaft that was sticking out of its side, it left a 6- to 8-inch long piece between the buck's shoulders.