Avid bowhunter Mark Beck had been hunting Big Louie for two seasons when he got this trail cam photo on Oct. 25, 2008. The big buck came in and worked a scrape during daylight hours, and 39 individual photos were taken. Mark was fired up, and he hunted the giant buck for the better part of the next 30 days.

When Illinois quail hunters Scott and Kyle Hacke went afield looking for some upland bird action in early January, the last thing they expected was to stumble upon the remains of what may have been the biggest deer ever to live in rural Menard County.

What killed the Menard County Monarch? How old was the trophy deer? Scott and Kyle certainly didn't have the answers, but they knew this was a buck that dreams are made of.

And how had the unrivaled king of Menard County evaded hunters for as long as he did?

That the buck was tracked for nearly a month by one dedicated hunter in 2008 and then mysteriously disappeared and died, only to be discovered dead by quail hunters, makes quite an interesting story.

THE BUCK OF A LIFETIME
John Grosboll has been an avid whitetail hunter and sportsman for over 35 years. He has nearly that many mounts to prove his success. He owns land in northern Menard County, and he puts great effort into creating upland bird habitat and utilizing conservation practices to create the kind of country he enjoys hunting. John keeps tabs on what's happening on his property, as well as on neighboring farms. But even with his decades of deer-hunting experience and time in the field, he never once laid eyes on this particular trophy buck.

"I knew there were two big deer in the area," John said. "I'd seen one buck with double drop tines myself. I'd only heard that another buck, a real monster, was here and that hunters were looking for him."

The bow season was almost over on Jan. 3, 2009. John limits the hunting pressure on his land to a select few and decided to let Kyle and Scott Hacke onto the property to do some quail hunting. All three men are avid upland bird hunters, and John has managed his property for quail and pheasants for several years. Kyle and Scott were hoping for a few birds but got a real surprise instead.

"We were hunting the northern filter strip from east to west on the Grosboll property when Kyle found the buck in the middle of the strip," said Scott Hacke. "The cover we were hunting was irregularly shaped with a square block of set-aside on the south end, bordered by a waterway to the east and north. Scott came up on the buck in the middle of the strip. I've never seen a buck like that out here."

The buck had been dead for a while, perhaps several weeks, but what stood out was its rack. It was massive, and nothing like what the Hackes had ever seen before. Coyotes had already pulled off most of the hide and decimated the body, but fortunately they'd left the head and bones intact. No one is sure how long the buck was dead before being discovered or how it had died; there wasn't any evidence to lead investigators to anything other than educated guesses.

Dead or alive, the Menard County Monarch was a rare find indeed!

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