The next day, the caravan left Caldwell County for the Butner area. On Saturday morning, Setzer went directly to the poplar tree where he killed his 8-pointer the year before and climbed until he was about 35 feet off the ground. It was in an area of open hardwoods, relatively close to a pine thicket, where a slight ridge led to the bottomland.

"The place I hunted that morning was where I had killed the 8-pointer. I climbed up the same exact tree," Setzer said. "The tree where I had killed the 4-pointer was about 50 yards down the ridge, but I didn't like that spot as much, because you couldn't see as far up the ridge."

Roberts took up residence in a tree stand about 150 yards up the ridge from Setzer, who didn't have to wait very long for things to start hopping, as the rut was obviously kicking in on the 43,859-acre game land north of Raleigh and Durham.

"It hadn't been daylight 45 minutes when here came a little doe from a pine thicket to the oak ridge," Setzer said. "She went behind me, and she wasn't 10 yards from my tree. I turned and heard a grunt about 50 yards away, and I saw a big-bodied deer moving through the undergrowth headed toward the open hardwoods on the ridge.

"About that time, the doe just about tore the woods down; I guess she saw me turn around, but she didn't blow at me. He stopped. And I couldn't find him. In a situation like that, seconds seem like hours. When I saw him again, he started walking back toward the thicket. I grunted, and he stopped and looked at me."

Setzer had trouble locating the buck in his scope, because he'd forgotten to change the magnification of his scope after sighting the gun in two nights before. When he realized the scope was still on 9-power, he took the gun off his shoulder, screwed the scope down to 3-power, then got on the buck.

"I found him in the scope about 50 yards away. I put it on his shoulder, and I pulled the trigger," he said.

Once the smoke cleared, Setzer couldn't see anything in the brush. He felt like he'd made a good shot, but he hadn't seen the buck run off, and he hadn't heard him crash to the ground.

"I sat there for about an hour, then I saw two more deer bouncing out of the bottom. A few minutes later, out came four shaggy mutts -- definitely not deer dogs," he said. "They went up the oak ridge, and after they disappeared, I called Tim on the (two-way) radio, and he said, 'We might as well get down,' but 10 minutes later, I heard a 'boom.' He'd shot another deer."

Roberts had dropped his deer on the spot, a strange 3-pointer with a forked beam on the left side and a spike on the right side that, instead of pointing up, turned downward and curved outward.