The amazing 4x4 frame of BArt's drop-tined giant grossed 183 4/8 typical points. With an additional 18 inches in non typical growth, including a 7 6/8 inch drop tine, Bart's awesome buck from Cumberland County netted 197 3/8 non-typical.

Named for the wild and scenic river flowing through it, Cumberland County is located along the Tennessee border in Kentucky's Pennyroyal region. While the predominant landscape can be characterized as gently rolling, the river corridor includes several rugged areas of densely forested ridges and hollows. Wherever there is sufficient acreage, the adjacent bottomlands are utilized for pasture and row crops. Not surprisingly, the habitat supports a healthy population of whitetails.

Bart Bertram has deer hunted this area of the state all his life. Three years ago, along with his father-in-law, Johnny Pickens, and Johnny's two brothers, he acquired hunting access to several hundred acres of farm and woodlands along the Cumberland River. This included nearly 100 bottomland acres in pasture and row crops, primarily corn and beans. The remaining acreage was mostly forested, with high hardwood ridges, narrow brush-choked ravines, and scattered pockets of cedar thickets.

"Although there was never a problem seeing deer in the river bottom fields, we decided to establish a wildlife opening in one of the hollows well away from the river," Bart said. "Basically, we planted approximately two acres with a mixture of milo, clover and beans."

SALAD BAR DELIGHTS
Not surprisingly, this new supplemental food source was an immediate hit with the local whitetails. From the hunter's standpoint, the opening became an excellent additional location from which to scout for and observe deer in late summer and early fall.

"During the summer of 2005, a bachelor group of three large bucks began using the opening," Bart noted. "The biggest buck in the group was the easiest to identify, due to the presence of a long drop tine on the left beam. Unfortunately, none of us saw the buck that fall while we were hunting."

Although a couple of big deer were sighted in 2006 during midsummer, antler growth had not advanced to the point of the development of an identifiable drop tine. Since the drop-tine buck was never sighted through the remainder of summer and the first several weeks of the early fall bow season, the hunters began to believe that something must have happened to him. Another very realistic possibility was that the drop tine might have been a one-time growth event, and the deer no longer had that particular antler characteristic.

However, a mid-October encounter that Bart's father-in-law had ended all of those theories quickly. On a Friday scouting trip prior to the opening of the two-day early muzzleloader season, the hunter was making his way along a narrow creek bottom when a giant buck suddenly bolted from a nearby cane thicket. Only yards away, he had a clear view of the deer's massive rack. That rack happened to include a long drop tine!

Knowing the buck had never been sighted during the 2005 season, Bart had no reason to believe that 2006 would be any different. Nevertheless, just knowing the big deer was somewhere in the area greatly heightened his anticipation for this brand new November gun season.

For opening weekend, Bart had invited a young local hunter, 16-year-old James Dyer IV, to camp out and hunt with the group. Unfortunately, James' dad, a longtime family friend, had lost his battle with cancer the previous year.

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