Having seen the sweating archer, the buck immediately ran off. Discouraged, Byrd was tempted to turn around and go home, but decided to go ahead and get in the stand. Overlooking an old field grown up in scrub oaks and honeysuckle, the stand was about 5 yards off one of the mowed strips and not far from a faint trail coming out of an adjacent stand of pines.

“I hadn’t been there 20 minutes,” Byrd recalled, “when I looked at the trail in front of me and saw a 7-point buck coming through that thick honeysuckle. He walked out into the mowed strip, turned, and stopped right in front of me. Since he wasn’t big enough to shoot, I just sat there with my bow across my lap, watching him for a little while.”

Cautiously glancing back toward the trail, Byrd suddenly spotted a massive set of velvet-covered antlers motionless in the trail. Instantly, he knew: This was the one he’d been waiting for. “He stood there a long time as I stared at him and counted his 10 points,” the hunter said.

Meanwhile the 7-pointer stood like a statue, plainly ready to explode into motion at any second. The velvet buck, quartering toward the anxious archer and surrounded by brush, offered no shot.

“It seemed like he stood there forever,” Byrd recalled. “Then he finally started moving down the trail, turning his rack sideways to get it through the briars.”

When the deer reached the mowed strip, the big buck ambled right out in front of the stand and Byrd slowly raised his bow. As he started to draw, something in the background caught his eye: another nice buck -- coming down the same trail!

He realized in a flash that these were the same three bucks that he’d previously seen together. But Byrd paid the third buck little attention, having already focused on the prize standing broadside at only 12 yards.

“About the time I was going to draw,” Byrd said, “ I glanced down at the 7-pointer; he looked right at me and stomped his foot. When he did that, I drew back, put the 20-yard pin a little low on the big buck and shot.”

The arrow found its mark, and the buck spun around and crashed back down the trail on which it had come in, followed closely by the other two bucks. Byrd remained in the stand for a few minutes, trying to collect his composure.

“I wasn’t really nervous when the whole thing was happening,” he said, “but after I shot him, I kind of fell apart. I thought I had killed a world record deer!”

Certain that he’d hit the buck in a vital area, Byrd decided to give the animal some time before following the trail. He got down, drove back to the house and enlisted the help of his brother and a friend to help track the buck. Back at the stand about an hour later, they had little trouble finding the fallen trophy by the edge of some planted pines some 75 yards away. “When I walked up on him,” Byrd noted, “I knew he was a 160-class deer.”

That assessment turned out to be pretty accurate. The typical 10-point rack, velvet-covered, had an inside spread of 21 3/8 inches. Points were fairly evenly matched, with exceptional G-2 and G-3 tines measuring from 10 1/8 to 12 3/8 inches each. Measured after the mandatory 60-day drying period required for the Pope & Young Club’s record book for outstanding bow kills, the rack grossed 162 inches. Following symmetry subtractions of 5 3/8 inches, the net score was 156 5/8 P&Y, thus far surpassing the minimum score of 125 necessary for a typical rack to be included in the P&Y book.

Byrd’s big whitetail was the best bow buck ever taken in Lee County and ranks as the No. 5 best ever recorded in Georgia. It was also the largest typical bow kill in the state last season, making it the winner of the Typical Archery category of the 2006 Georgia Big Deer Contest. Sponsored jointly by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, Georgia Sportsman, and the Georgia Outdoor Writers Association, the contest recognizes the best bucks taken by archery tackle and firearms each year.