The King & I

[Mike P]

The King & I

The season is over and there are six inches of snow on the ground. I have a rotten cold and have no desire to venture out. I have been sitting here at the puter visiting some of my favorite forums while constantly blowing my nose. I have been doing this for two days now and I am really getting bored. I could join my wife and watch some TV, but I can really only take Oprah about twice a year. So I decided to bang the keyboard and tell you about the king.

I first saw the king in May of 2001. He came with his mom and twin brother to the feeder behind my house. I normally do not pay much attention to a doe with twin fawns at my feeder; it is a very common occurrence. But something caught my eye with the one fawn. It was his throat patch, the tuft of white hair under his chin. It looked just like a little crown. I called my wife to look at his unusual marking and she was the first to call him the little king.

I saw him often in 2001 in various spots in my neighborhood. I live on a private road with twenty-six other homeowners. Our lot sizes vary from a low of five acres to a high of twenty acres. The combined acreage of all homes is just at one hundred acres. About seventy-five percent of the lots are wooded. We are bordered on two sides by farm fields that alternate crops each year between beans and corn. The third side is bordered by an Olympic horse training facility and the forth side is bordered with several hundred acres of woods that are owned by a shooting club, target only, no hunting. It is an urban deer paradise like so many others on the outskirts of metropolitan cities. It may be bold to call Cincinnati a metropolis, but, you get my drift. Our deer numbers are out of sight and our little congregation of homes fall just within the urban deer control zone where we can just about take does at will by purchasing over the counter urban doe tags.


His twin brother was killed in September that first year. I saw that a fawn had been hit on the state route that separates our neighborhood from the horse farm. When the doe showed up at the feeder with just the king, I knew the fawn that had been killed was hers. The mother and son were regular visitors that year and I watched the king sport his first buttons that fall. The little king stayed with his mother that first winter of his life and I was happy to see him in February. He had survived his first hunting season.

I saw the king off and on during the summer of 2002. He was no longer with his mother but was in the company of two other young bucks who would visit the neighboring bean field most evenings. I would always smile when I would see him as I glassed the field looking for the buck I would pursue in the fall. He was so easy to pick out with that unique throat patch. He no longer visited the feeder behind my house during the daylight hours. He still came around, but only at night. I watched him grow his first rack that summer. I had dozens of pictures of him visiting the feeder via my deer cam. As he developed that first rack I began to wonder if there was something wrong with him. His left antler appeared to be somewhat normal sporting three small points but his G2 went off at a strange angle. His right antler was a mess. It came out from the base normally but then took a direct dive straight down and appeared to almost be inverted. He looked completely healthy and actually had a very large body for a buck of his age. I came to the conclusion that he may just suffer from some bad genes and just be one of those bucks that just never pan out in the headgear department.

The fall of 2002 and the start of the Ohio archery season brought me face to face with the king several times. I was hunting a travel corridor to the bean field in hopes of taking on a bruiser 10 point that I mistakenly thought I had patterned. I would look at the king under my tree and think to myself “what a mess” and on more then a few occasions I would speak to him. Now I’m not in the habit of educating whitetails about bow hunters in trees. But for some reason, I just didn’t want this guy killed. I would whisper “your gonna get killed” and he would jump and run twenty or thirty yards and look back at the strange voice in the tree. Little did I know at that time that I would rue the day I educated this buck to archery hunters in tress. But I felt pretty smug that February when I got a picture of the king at my feeder one night and felt I had a hand in his survival of his second hunting season.

I didn’t see the king during the summer of 2003 as he did not visit the feeder. I finally caught up with him in August with another buck in the bean field in the early evening. It was not his throat patch that caught my attention in that August twilight. It was his rack. He had double drop tines. His G3’s both pointed straight at terra firma. At first I didn’t even realize it was the king. I was so mesmerized by the rack that I didn’t notice the throat patch right away. When it dawned on me who I was looking at I had this strange feeling of pride, like a parent who just watched his child do something special at a school event of some sort. I know that sounds crazy but it is the best way I can describe how I felt. He was now a nice eight point buck with a very desirable if not overly large rack for a three year old. I watched the king in the bean field those last three weeks of August and the first two weeks of September. Sometimes he was alone, other times he was with two nice tens who were obviously a year older then the king. The two tens were in the 130 class by my estimation and not bucks I would target, so as much as I enjoyed watching the king, I took my scouting elsewhere to find the buck I would hunt in the soon to open season. I settled in on a buck I had watched for a couple of years that we had nicknamed the “gun club buck” as he rarely left the sanctuary of their land. He would leave the gun club land and come onto one of my neighbor’s property to visit their white oak grove when the acorns fell. So I spent that early fall plotting my strategy to kill this buck. I was sure he would go 150 easy and maybe 160 if the scorer was feeling generous.

I killed the “gun club buck” on October 17th. underneath a white oak tree only sixty yards from my neighbors deck in their backyard. He scored 154 and is just a beautiful buck. I now had the remainder of October, November, December and January to doe hunt and video other bucks I would encounter. I did see some fine bucks that season, but I made the right decision killing the “gun club buck” as he was the best buck that entered my twenty-five yard kill zone that year. I did put my hunting partner on a very nice 11 point that ended up scoring 146. He is my next door neighbor and he got so intrigued seeing me troll the neighborhood in full camo with my bow that he decided to take it up and see what it was all about. He is now hooked and bow hunts every spare moment. He is a physician and has Wednesdays off so he hunts the neighborhood with me on that day. He owns a farm in Adams County Ohio (home of the Amish buck and wabi) and we now have a huge field of Imperial Whitetail Clover at this farm. He goes to the farm every weekend and hunts and I join him at the farm just about every other weekend. I enjoy hunting the farm. But I have to “fess up” that I am addicted with the urban deer I hunt in my neighborhood.

Let me tell you a funny thing about this neighborhood. We have a property owners meeting once a year in the spring to discuss our finances, road maintenance, the covenants and the like. Ten years ago I used to catch hell at these meetings from my neighbors for killing “bambi”. Now, these same neighbors who used to look at me like I was satin himself now plead with me to come to their yards and kill the “damn deer”. Strange how losing several thousand dollars of landscaping every year changes the way people think about bambi. I love it! I now have virtually unlimited access to all my neighbors properties and they no longer think it strange to see a grown man in camo walk through their yards at strange hours. When they see me hauling a dead doe down the road on my Honda Foreman, they give me the “thumbs up” and say “kill about a hundred more will ya.” I just love urban hunting. And from the bucks I see now here on the web, and the bucks I see from populated Ohio County’s at the Deer and Turkey Expo in Columbus, I’m not alone with this love. I predict that new record holders in the future will come from urban areas not only here in Ohio, but from other Midwest States.

It was July 16, 2004 at 2:43 a.m. when I next saw the king. Well, I saw his picture, I didn’t actually see him. He hit my mineral blocks back by the feeder and the deer cam caught him. I was amazed at the size of his antlers at this stage of the growth cycle. I was stunned by the drop tines. They were going to be incredible. His rack was going to be massive and wide for a three year old buck. I think it first hit me at that moment. The first thought that I might just be hunting the king this fall entered my mind. I had not considered this before as I just never hunt three year old bucks as a rule. It’s not my rule, it’s their rule. They just normally don’t have the antlers I’m looking for. Now there is absolutely no way I can judge a deer’s age while he is on the “hoof”. I am just making this statement based on looking at deer racks and deer teeth for 45 of my 59 years on this earth. Also, for the past eighteen years I have been able to document antler growth and deer age with videos of many of the bucks here in my neighborhood. No, the bucks I hunt here have generally been four years of age or older. The thought of hunting the king had just never been considered. I felt mixed emotions about the prospect. But I also decided to place the king in position three of my annual hunting plan.

I have three positions in my annual whitetail plan. Position number one goes to the buck I have decided to hunt for the entire season if need be. He is the only buck for me and I will forsake all other bucks that season but him. Position number two is applied to other bucks I have seen that will cause me to say to hell with position one as I only have one month of the season left. Position three is applied to any buck that you draw down on and have dead to rights under your tree. You are not going to miss at this range and this buck is dead with the twitch of your finger. You wrestle back and forth in your mind should you kill this buck. Some I have. But more have walked. If the king came under my climber this season, I would have to make the decision then.

The apple orchard buck made the decision for me in the 2004/2005 season. He was in the number one position for the season. On December 5th. he entered my twenty-five yard circle of confidence and I killed him. I have friends that live on forty-five acres of woods that borders an apple orchard. I am the only person they allow to hunt on their property and only with an arrow. My friends had been seeing this buck for the entire summer and gave me the times and places of their sightings. I set up on him in August and watched him from afar with my binoculars. He was a beast. This was a huge deer! In all my years, this was the biggest body deer I had ever seen. He was three hundred pounds if he was an ounce. And he ended up sporting a great twelve point rack, the extra two points being a five inch kicker on his right G3 and a two inch kicker on his left G2. He is on the wall next to me as I type this and he still takes my breath away even now as I glance up at him. His rack is great, but it is his size that just overwhelms you. This was a very mature buck, probably seven or eight. I knew that the only way I would be able to harvest him would be during the rut. He was too old and smart to let me get close to him on any regular basis. He would have to go stupid in order for me to get my shot. So I set up on the does that bedded by the apple orchard. A doe brought him home one morning. I brought him home with me that afternoon.

I spent the remainder of December and January looking for the king. I was out there every day under the guise of looking for my meat doe and trying to set my partner up on a good buck. But I was really just trying to get close to the king. I wanted to see him again up close. I wanted to see the rack at fifteen yards. When I look back now, I can see what I was really trying to do was escort him through the season. I guess in some perverse manner I was thinking that if I was out there he would be safe and wouldn’t fall prey to another hunter. When the season closed, I failed in two regards. I never did see the king and I didn’t get my partner on a good buck. I never got him close to one or one close to him if you prefer. I killed a magnificent buck that year yet the season ended for me on a down note as I had not seen the king and I was considering the fact that he might have been killed. But I had avoided the dilemma of what would happen if I put the king under my partner. How would I feel about him killing the king? I had decided ahead of time that if it happened it happened and my buddy would have the best deer he had ever taken at this early stage of his hunting career. I would not begrudge him the king. But I have to admit I was glad that the scenario never did play out.

I spent my time in February and March hunting sheds. I found some great ones but not the one I was looking for. I turned my attention to the plans for the upcoming spring planting of our food plots at the farm. I thought little of him until he came at me like a bolt of lighting from my computer monitor. It was April the 17th. at 4:30 am according to the jpeg date and time stamp. I had just downloaded the pictures from the deer cam and when the throat patch leaped off the screen I stood up and started screaming at my wife “He’s Alive, He’s Alive.” I immediately called my buddy at his office telling his staff it was an emergency and to get him on the phone. They of course know now what type of emergency this is. I have been calling him now for years with deer emergencies. As he is also my primary health care provider I often wonder what would ever happen if I really did have to call him with a real medical emergency. The nurses probably wouldn’t believe me. I told the Doc that I was sure the king would move to number one on the plan for next season.


(I will complete the history of the king if I survive the night and don’t expire due to this head cold. But right now I am just feeling just two damn lousy to type anymore. My partner the good doctor told me to suck it up and quit being such a wussy when I told him this cold was killing me. And after all the work I did on his behalf trying to put a 160 buck under him! I can’t wait for him to start complaining how cold his feet are when we hunt in January next year.)

[Bucktail]

Mike P,

Great story. I really enjoyed it.

Your one lucky guy. I have a load of deer here in my area and back yard, but I'm unable to hunt them because of the other land owners.

Just had a herd of 13 does/button bucks back here about one hour ago. A nice four point last night at 2330. Some really nice 8, 9 10, 11 points thru Nov/Dec/Jan.

Well one of these days everyone will get tired of them eating all their shrubs and flowers and I'll be able to take a few.

Bucktail

[Grizzly Adam]

Well, I can't relate to the urban scene ... but deer are more adaptable than ol' Grizz! It is neat that you have close access to good hunting. I enjoyed reading about your experiences. That's a good way to spend a cold ... keep up the good work.

By the way ... I'd heard about Ohio having a lot of "Little Kings" around!

[JR]

Great story. Once you're feeling better, Get your cam out and take pics. (Everybody love pics!)

-Jason

[R.J.]

Cool story ! .... would love to see a picture of him !

[sumner4991]

Loved reading your story . . .good luck in your decision. Long live the King!

I get the same reaction to the deer where I hunt. And 25 years ago, it was a different story, just as your's.

[wabi]

Great story! I'd like to see a pic of him, too.

[dodgeman158]

wonderfull story.Thats my dream scenario.

[Kenton]

great story, can't wait for the rest.

[STEELWORKER]

you should write for a living....i really enjoyed this and look forward to the conclusion. oh, and as wabi said, i'd love too see some pics of him too.------STEEL

[flbuckmaster]

WHERE'S THE PIC?