"Dad, it's the rut. When are you going to hunt Mountain Mike?"

"When things get right," I replied to my son A.J. as we sat at the supper table. "It's too dry and warm now."

My wife Karen interrupted. "I wish you'd quit naming these deer," she said. "Every time one reaches the status of getting a name, he ends up on our table. I don't know why, but it's hard for me to eat a buck that you and the boys have been talking about and call by name."

"I don't think you have much to worry about with this old buck," I replied. "He's awfully afraid of the daylight."

Mountain Mike had been a name spoken almost daily in our home since early August 2007. Even though I knew this old buck lived somewhere in the remote mountains of East Tennessee, I often wondered if our paths would ever cross. Mountain Mike, as he'd come to be known, would turn out to be the most nocturnal buck that I have ever hunted. Every trail photo and Wildlife Eye video that I had ever gotten of him had been taken at night. I had seen him only once -- in 2005 during the peak of the rut.

A SPECIAL WHITETAIL
As I watched him from a distance that year, I could tell that even at the young age of 3 1/2 he did not like moving around during daylight hours. He was moving fast, and he kept turning his head from side to side, looking for danger. His actions reminded me of a much older buck -- perhaps one that had been drawn out into the daylight by a hot doe or some other forced movement.

I had gotten my first trail photo of the buck a couple of months earlier on Sept. 23, an unassuming event at the time. After studying the photograph, I decided to shoot him if I had the opportunity. Even though he was big-boned with a tall, long body, he did not have the kind of genes I wanted to see spread around. He was a clean 8-point, and since he was then 3 1/2, I figured he'd always be an 8-point. He was also fairly narrow in spread and weak on his brow tines and mass.

There were other distinguishing characteristics about his rack. His left side was a little better than his right, and his right main beam dropped down below his left at the tip. His only good trait was that he had long G-2s. I believe that even at age 3 1/2, the buck's G-2s were about 11 inches long. He carried all of those characteristics for the remainder of his life.

A VIRTUAL PHANTOM
Even though I never targeted this buck specifically, I did expect to see him some more and perhaps get a shot at him since the rut was going strong and he was an energetic 3 1/2-year-old. I never saw him again, and I never got any more trail photos of him in 2005.

The following year when he was 4 1/2, I started getting video of him with a Wildlife Eye camera in August. That continued on throughout the fall. I also got one trail photo of him in 2006. He was still a clean 8. His G-2s were around 12 inches long, and I believe he would have scored about 140. I still planned to shoot him if the opportunity presented itself. However, I did not specifically target him, because he was not what I considered a trophy.

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