Alabama hunter Steven Moody rattled in this big Yellowhammer State whitetail after his 10-year-old son urged him to watch some YouTube tutorials on the topic.
April 18, 2025
By Clifford Neames
Steven Moody’s 10-year-old son, Brantley, urged him to learn how to rattle. After studying a few YouTube videos, and reading up on how it is done, he decided it was time to try it in the Alabama woods.
Steven grew up hunting in the Bankhead National Forest, and Black Warrior WMA. The vast hills and hollows are perfect habitat for whitetails, and he and Brantley like to hike in and sit on the ground to pursue them there.
In the 2024 season, Steven had managed to bring in several bucks when he tickled the antlers together, but they could not seal the deal. Hunting in close quarters in the rough terrain is challenging when you have an alert buck searching for the source of the fight he is hearing. In each instance, the bucks slipped away when the visual didn’t align with what they had heard.
By early December, the rut was coming on strong. Brantley was in school, and Steven was busy with his firewood business when he decided it was time to get in the woods for a short hunt. Seeing an opening on the 12th, he slipped into one of his favorite spots, settling halfway down the ridge.
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There wasn’t much action, so Steven decided to try his can call. Not long after he rolled it over, the distinctive sound of footsteps in the leaves came from further up the hill. But it was not to be this time. The deer stopped to scan through the brush, then drifted away as dusk approached. He never got a good look at it. That night, Steven washed all his clothes and prepped his gear for the next morning’s hunt.
By 5:30 AM, he was back in the woods, setting up further down the finger this time. He had painted his face, and cleared out the leaves so he could move a little if need be.
This time, he decided to get aggressive. He grunted a few times and began a long session of slamming his antlers together combined with hitting the ground and stomping. If there was a buck around, he wanted it to think two big deer were having at it.
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“I got after it for about two minutes,” he recalled. “Ten minutes later, I heard a deer running on the ridge behind me.”
As he turned to get a look at the buck, he thought it was at least a 125-incher and prepared to shoot.
“I could see he had his ears pinned back as I put the crosshairs on his chest and pulled the trigger,” he added. “Then he ran down the ridge straight toward me.”
The giant buck crashed about 45 yards from Steven, giving him a much better look at the antlers.
“That’s when I decided to put another shot in him!”
After that, he got over to the buck and said a big prayer of thanks.
Both sides of the rack carry five long points, set on two long beams. There are stickers on the G2s and G3s, and enough mass to push the score into the 170s. The buck dressed out to 160 pounds — an incredible Alabama public-land whitetail!
