"As soon as the big buck came out, he turned like he knew where I was. It was just my day."

The buck, Whitt said, covered the 200 yards that separated them in about five minutes. "I didn't do any grunting or anything; he just came right to me," he said.

Whitt put his rangefinder on various clumps of grass and vegetation out in the field at different ranges around places he thought the buck might arrive. On key, the buck walked directly in front of Whitt and stopped at 23 yards, quartering slightly toward him, but very slightly.

"He was between 20 and 25 yards, and he stopped almost broadside and gave me the shot," Whitt said. "It seemed like it all happened within a minute, and I never got nervous -- at least not until after I shot."

Whitt raised his Reflex bow and let fly. He knew it was a clean hit and not a pass-through. The buck took off and left the field, and Whitt thought he heard him crash to the ground back in the woods. "It took forever for me to get down out of the tree because I was shaking so much," he said. "I had another buddy hunting with me, Aaron Shanklin, and I called him on the two-way radios we carry. I told him, 'I'll tell you what, I just shot a deer that I'll guarantee was 22 inches wide.' "

Whitt trailed the deer about 30 yards out of the field and found the last 6 inches of the carbon shaft of his arrow -- the rest of which, including the 100-grain Thunderhead broadhead, was still in the deer.

Whitt, who is colorblind to red, knows better than to try and blood trail a buck by himself. "I'm the guy who stands holding the flashlight at the last spot of blood, while everybody goes out in front looking for more," he said, laughing. "I waited an hour and called my dad. He's like a bloodhound. I showed him where I shot the deer, and he looked around. He may have walked 10 yards, and he picked up a blood trail. It was pretty steady; we walked right to him."

The big buck had made it 70 yards with the rest of Whitt's arrow in his chest cavity.

Whitt took the big 11-point buck to Harlan Hall, a biologist with the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission who is a certified Boone and Crockett Club scorer. Hall put his tape on the buck and came up with a preliminary score of 150 6/8 points. "He told me that I might lose about an inch," Whitt said.

When he took the buck to the Dixie Deer Classic, the buck scored 150 even, with a 22 3/4-inch inside spread -- beating the 22-inch guarantee that he gave his hunting partner.

The rack could have been even better.

The buck had beams that measured 25 6/8 and 26 4/8 inches. The first points on its beams after the brow tines were both 6 inches long. The next point on its left beam measured 10 1/2 inches, but the matching point on the right beam was broken off at 5 4/8 inches. The next tines were 9 2/8 and 8 4/8 inches long. The right beam had a 1 1/8-inch point close to the end of the beam. The buck's gross score was around 157. If the third point on its right beam hadn't been broken off -- if it had matched the one on the left beam -- the buck would have scored in the low 160s.