Duane Boston of Claremont tagged this symmetrical 10-point typical with his muzzleloader in Granville County. The buck scored 153 2/8, the biggest blackpowder buck of last season. Photo by Dan Kibler.

Through the 1980s and 1990s, Granville County was one of North Carolina's best counties when it came to producing trophy whitetail bucks. At the turn of the century, Rockingham County and its neighbor to the west, Stokes County, started spitting out the Tar Heel State's best bucks on a regular basis.

So, the 2006 season was sort of a meeting between the old and the new.

Two bucks that took home some of the top honors at last spring's Dixie Deer Classic called Granville and Rockingham home -- at least until they made fatal mistakes in mid-November.

Michael Clifton of Reidsville busted a great 21-point non-typical in his home county of Rockingham on Nov. 18. The buck scored an impressive 167 5/8 points and was the biggest non-typical taken in North Carolina in 2006.

Duane Boston of Claremont struck gold on a tiny piece of private property in Granville County two weeks earlier -- to the day -- when he tagged a big typical 10-pointer with his muzzleloader. The buck carried a near-perfect rack that scored 153 2/8 points, making it the best blackpowder buck taken in North Carolina last season.

And neither hunter was surprised by his kill. Both of them knew a big buck was patrolling the woods in their hunting areas, but neither is quite sure that the buck he killed was "the" big one.

Chronologically, it makes sense to discuss Boston's buck first. Taken on opening day of blackpowder season in Granville County, the buck was the object of Boston's attention for almost eight months. Well, maybe.

"This all started in the 2005 season," said Boston, a 44-year-old furniture builder who hunts almost exclusively with his father, Ronald. "I've got 35 acres that this guy lets me hunt, and there are about 18 acres in grass fields, then a thick clearcut with a thin strip of oaks running through it, then a briar thicket.

"I killed a nice 10-point buck in there in 2005 that scored in the 130s. My dad and I were doing some scouting in February after the season, and he picked up a big shed (antler). It was half of an 8-pointer, with a big, long brow tine.

The shed -- the right-hand antler of a buck that survived the 2005 season, carried a brow tine about 6 inches long; its next two tines were pushing 8 inches. With a matching left-hand antler, the buck would have probably scored 110 points or better, presumably as a 2 1/2-year-old. It was enough to pique Boston's interest.

"I went back there in the spring, several times, and got deeper and deeper into the woods, cutting in some places, then I stayed out of there. I love to bowhunt, but I didn't want to take a chance of going in there with a bow and running him out of there. I didn't go back until the first day of muzzleloader season."

Boston has taken many nice bucks on that piece of property, as well as another one in Granville County; he knows the area has the potential to produce nice bucks, even, he said, if "the area gets hunted pretty hard. People are hunting all around, and there's dog hunting around there. But this place has been good for me."

So, Boston decided that the way to get to the big buck was to go deeper and deeper into the thick cover on one end of his hunting tract. The area is bordered by an impenetrable briar thicket on one side, with a thin strip of oaks through the center and a dense 10-year-old pine cutover on the other side.

"That's where all the deer had been coming from. They're crossing through the oaks, moving between the two thickets. I picked out the tree for my stand when my dad found that shed. I went back the next week and cut shooting lanes out into the little oaks. I could see maybe 200 yards, even if I couldn't shoot that far."

Ronald Boston found the shed on the other side of the property, but David knew the buck would be bedding in either the cutover or the briar thicket, so he set up along the funnel of small oaks in between them.

"They love lying in the briar thicket," David Boston said.

Because he was worried about spooking the deer if he walked into the area in the dark to hunt on opening morning, Boston hunted another area, then showed up at his briar thicket-cutover at about 2 o'clock in the afternoon. He slipped his Buckshot climbing stand up the tree he picked out and set up to wait out the rest of the day. "I saw a button buck and some other little deer earlier," he said. "Then, later on, I had a doe come out. She must have been in (estrus), and she hung around for a little while. It was about 5 o'clock, and she came out of the briar thicket on the side I was looking at. She was just wandering around, going back and forth."