Massive Alabama Buck Tagged, but Top Target Still Unfound

“Wow, that is a giant buck!” Hunter Terry exclaimed as he and his wife, Kaylee, spotted the deer off the side of the road during an afternoon ride. Locating a 200-inch deer, especially in Alabama, can cause hunters to do remarkable things. In Hunter’s case, that sighting led to a long search for some nearby ground that could be hunted.

Finding a landowner willing to allow hunting in the area was a formidable task, fueled by thoughts of taking the biggest deer Hunter had ever seen. It took two years for his efforts to strike paydirt. That’s when Hunter and his hunting buddy, Caleb, would get permission to share an 80-acre piece of ground.

Gaining access just before the 2024 bow season was a great start, but it was no guarantee of success. Now, the men needed to dial in on the giant, if the buck was even using the small tract. Hunter set up eight cell cameras to narrow the search.

Unfortunately, they revealed the big buck wasn’t around during the early bow season. But there were other nice deer, and on their very first hunt they both took Pope and Young class bucks. Not a bad beginning! And that was enough to keep them satisfied for the time being. After their initial success, weeks passed with no real assurance that either of them would ever see the giant target buck that Hunter had spotted from the road two years prior…

Then, late in December, as the rut approached, a few pics began to show promise. There was another giant buck frequenting the tract. At first, the big buck was only there at night, always showing up late and gone again before sunrise. The new target seemed to favor a small food plot, staying on one side of the property. With this new intel, the two hunters were making progress, but a big buck found is not always a big buck tagged!

Hunter determined two more things from all of the images. The giant was hanging close to one particular doe, and he was definitely not living on the property. Using that new info, Hunter modified his hunt plan and finally got a glimpse of the deer through the hardwoods at about 150 yards. Moving in tighter, he closed that gap to 75 yards on another hunt… But still, he had no shot!

Caleb was anxious to get in on the action, so he and Hunter tossed a coin for choice to hunt the plot, and Caleb won. Bad wind direction nixed that plan, and the big buck dream had to be put on hold once again. Each of the men was limited to hunting weekends, so a pic showing the buck in the plot at 11:30 AM on a work day only added to their anxiety.

Good Fortune

On Jan. 9, Hunter caught a big break with a weather change. The forecast was predicting an approaching cold front and a significant chance of snow. He slipped quietly into the woods early that morning, and the deer were moving. A nice 120-inch buck sneaked past his stand… The opportunity was tempting, but Hunter let the buck walk.

Caleb and Hunter were texting about the hunt, and after reconsidering, they decided if either of them had another chance at that buck they would take it.

After a short, midday break, Hunter gave Caleb first choice of stands, and they settled in again at 1:00 PM for the afternoon hunt. The pair were about 150 yards apart trying to cover all possible areas where the big buck might appear.

“Everything was going well, and then I got a text from my wife,” Hunter recalls. “She had wrecked the truck!”

As Hunter sat there thinking about that, another text came through, this time from Caleb. “Buck on the way!”

That settled matters, there was no time for Hunter to leave now…

A few minutes later, a young buck came into view, working a scrape before leaving through the area Hunter was expecting the target deer to come in from. About 20 minutes passed… Then, as Hunter scanned the woods, he spotted the giant buck he’d been waiting on, and only 40 yards away! The buck appeared off to Hunter’s right in the woods. “I told myself not to look at the buck’s antlers,” he remembers. “But that was nearly impossible!” The old doe and the buck from earlier were right there too. Was it was about to happen?

Incredibly, instead of raising his crossbow, Hunter decided to take a quick video.

“I wanted something in case I missed,” he proclaimed.

Then, Hunter ranged the deer, now at a mere 13 yards. And then he sent the crossbow bolt on its deadly mission just as the doe bolted. As soon as the bolt crashed through the buck’s vitals, the giant retreated into the underbrush. “I was so excited that I let out a yell,” Hunter laughs. “Caleb heard it, and he climbed down and headed my way. We both wanted to celebrate, but this wasn’t quite over yet!”

Track 'n Trail App

Since the big deer had gone out of sight, the men decided to give it some time. An hour later, they were joined by Mark Hose, the visionary behind the Track ’n Trail app. Track ’n Trail was designed as a blood-trailing aid for spotty blood trails. Following a poor trail can be stressful. Fortunately, there’s a new app dedicated to helping hunters blood trail more effectively. Paired with the app’s hardware kit, which includes a flashlight and a hand-held rig for the light and your phone, this app can detect blood and generate alerts when the blood is detected. Not only does this make general blood trailing easier, but for the 1.2 million hunters who have some level of colorblindness, it’s a game changer!

After Hunter and Caleb deliberated with Mark, an anxious decision was made to go find the buck. Returning to the kill site, they soon discovered that the broadhead had indeed done its job, and the deer had only gone about 40 yards. As they arrived at the end of the blood trail, there was no doubt the deer was a true giant, far bigger than anything Hunter had ever taken. The tape confirmed that the wide mainframe 10-point rack with splits on both sides tallied 191 5/8 inches.

A snow storm arrived later that night, presenting a unique opportunity for pics with this incredible deer.

“I couldn’t be happier with how this turned out,” Hunter stated. “But I still wonder what ever happened to the monster buck my wife and I had spotted two years earlier!