Billy’s buck caused a sensation last November as photos of it went all over the world on the Internet. And the Maryland monarch is quite sensational! With a score of 268 1/8 non-typical, it’s the largest buck ever recorded on the entire Eastern Seaboard.

Billy Crutchfield of Bel Alton, Maryland, is no stranger to big bucks. Because he’s a fireman, his schedule is very flexible, and over the years he’s been able to dedicate a lot of time to his deer hunting pursuits. Billy hunts a number of farms in Charles County, Maryland. On Feb. 23, 2005, he was shed hunting on one of those farms when he found a large non-typical shed antler about 50 yards from a ladder stand that is known as the “river ladder.” The stand is near a marsh close to the Potomac River.

Upon finding the shed, Billy immediately went to find his hunting partner, Paul Junior. After the two hunters examined the antler and talked about the trophy buck that had dropped it, Billy made a comment to his partner. “Someday someone is going to kill a big buck out of that stand,” he said.

Billy had no way of knowing it at the time, but he would be the fortunate hunter to make that prediction come true two seasons hence in November 2006. And the buck in question would not simply be a “big” buck. It would turn out to be the highest-scoring whitetail ever taken by a hunter on the entire Eastern Seaboard.

FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH A MARYLAND MONARCH
Nine months after finding the impressive shed antler, Billy couldn’t wait to get into the woods during the opening week of Maryland’s shotgun season.

“I remember the first Tuesday of the 2005 shotgun season like it was yesterday,” Billy recalls. “On that morning, I made the 600-yard walk to the old ladder stand near the river in the predawn darkness. It was a cloudy day with rain expected, and I decided to sit there until about 8:30 a.m. because I had some work to take care of later that day.

“About 8:25 I checked the time on my cell phone and I turned to look behind me. There he was -- the biggest whitetail I’d ever laid eyes on -- about 125 yards away, walking in my direction. He had a massive rack. As my heart began to race faster and faster, he turned slightly and started going a different way than I had expected. Actually, he was now walking away from me. I didn’t know it at the time, but he changed his direction because of the way the marsh was shaped.

“All of a sudden, he stopped at about 120 yards and bedded down in the 6-foot-tall marsh grass. He simply disappeared. At about 9 a.m. my hunting partner, who I always refer to as ‘Junior,’ called me from work to find out how I was doing. He couldn’t believe it when I told him what had happened. Then it began to rain.”

Billy stood like a statue in his ladder stand for the entire day in the driving rain, hoping that something good would happen.

“Every hour or two, the buck would stand up and shake off the water like a wet dog,” Billy remembers. “He was so beautiful standing on the edge of the marsh with that incredible rack. He never knew I was there. I couldn’t see him at all when he was bedded and the weather was so miserable that I thought about leaving several times. I was soaking wet, shivering and hungry. But then he would stand up again, give a quick glimpse around and immediately go back down.

“I kept thinking, ‘I’m cold but I’m not going to freeze and I’m hungry but I’m not going to starve, and I can dry off and eat after dark. So I’m staying!’

“I talked to Junior several more times on the phone, and he couldn’t believe that I was just sitting there without trying something. But what could I do? I wasn’t about to take a risky shot through 6-foot reeds at that distance. I hoped that when the river’s high tide started coming in that he would move and give me a shooting opportunity, but he didn’t.

“I later learned that he was on the only high spot in the entire marsh and he just stayed put. When I climbed down just after dark, I had no idea if he was still there or if he had gotten up and moved off. By then it was too dark to tell. My last sighting that day had been at about 4 p.m.”

DÉJÀ VU ONE YEAR LATER
Billy hunted both Saturday and Sunday on opening weekend of the 2006 shotgun season without incident. In Maryland, it is legal to hunt the first Sunday during shotgun season. Billy also hunted the following Monday morning. He saw a number of deer but no shooters. On Monday afternoon he actually planned to hunt out of a portable climber, but he changed his mind at the last minute.

page: 1 | 2 | 3