At some point while they were out hunting in late 1945, Kike jumped a huge buck with an exceptionally wide rack. He was hunting with his father's Model 1886 Winchester lever-action in .33 caliber. Despite being a crack shot, Kike missed the buck at very close range. That night back in camp, he told Fred about the missed opportunity and described the buck as being the biggest buck he had ever seen. He insisted that the deer had a "3-foot outside spread."

The rusting body of Fred's old flatbed truck, used for so many years during the 1940s and '50s in Fred's various deer camps, now sits in its final resting place at the old Goodwin homestead, along with several other vintage vehicles. This is the same truck pictured at the beginning of the story. It represents a living legend and an era long gone.

The following summer (1946), Fred was out scouting near his remote deer camp and he saw the enormous buck in velvet. The buck was feeding in a burned area with a doe. Later he spotted the buck several more times, always with the same doe. By the time hunting season rolled around, Fred started hunting the buck in earnest, but he never saw the deer again that year. In early 1947 he spent hours searching for the buck's shed antlers. Although he found a number of other shed antlers, those of the "Silver Ridge Buck" remained undiscovered.

Fred gradually started to learn a little bit about the buck's habits and where the deer traveled and bedded. Because one front hoof was slightly rounded, the deer's tracks were easy to recognize. Fred eventually narrowed down the buck's home range to a small peninsula that was surrounded by a large bog in an area known as Reed Dead Water. He placed a small platform in a tree in a key spot at the head of the peninsula, but despite hours of sitting in his stand, he never saw the buck during the 1947 season.

Fred again looked for the buck's sheds in early 1948, but he failed to find them. Later that summer, he spotted the buck in velvet near the bog where he had been hunting. When the 1948 season opened, Fred hunted the buck relentlessly but with no further sightings and no success.

END OF A QUEST
Things were about to change during the 1949 season. Knowing the old buck was still using the same area, Fred decided to approach his stand from a different direction. On a cold day near the end of November, he reached his stand well before daylight and climbed aboard.

Shortly after daylight, the same old doe that always seemed to be with the big buck appeared. "She never had any lambs (fawns)," Fred said. "But she was always with that buck."

Fred fought off the bitter cold for another hour or so, hoping the buck would also make an appearance. Soon another deer approached from the bog. Indeed, it was him. Calmly raising his trusty Model 99 Savage .300, Fred quickly ended his long quest for the Silver Ridge Buck.

"The old buck's front teeth were gone and the jaw teeth were worn down to the bone," Fred remembered. "He was probably 8 to 10 years old, and I had been hunting him for four years. He was 30 inches wide on the inside, and I knew that he would make the Boone and Crockett record book."

It just so happened that one of Fred's regular hunting clients, a man whose name Fred prefers to keep anonymous, was also in camp hunting with Fred that week. The moment this other hunter saw the massive antlers from the Silver Ridge Buck, he wanted to buy them. The story goes that he offered Fred $100 for the rack.

page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5