By Steve Ruckel

As hunters, we all dream of having one of those years when everything seems to work out and good fortune falls on us like white oak acorns during a bountiful autumn. For most of us, taking a single trophy whitetail is more than sufficient. But for 26-year-old Travis Harvill, the combination of events that occurred during the 2002 season proved both interesting and exceptional. When all was said and done, the big Peach County buck he killed became the No. 5 all-time best typical taken by bow and arrow in Georgia. Here's his story.

While he has hunted on a deer club lease in Emanuel County for years, he also has access to a small chunk of private property not far from his home of Byron in northern Peach County. A mixture of cotton fields, planted pines and hardwoods provides good habitat for deer on the tract, and the land had gone virtually unhunted for the past five years. Scouting the area had excited Travis.

"The year before, I found a set of huge tracks on the property," Travis recalled. "I nicknamed him 'wide toes' because they were so wide, and I knew he had to be a heavy deer."

But there was more.

"Last spring a farmer working the place found a shed antler from a buck and he showed it to me," Travis said. "It was the largest shed I had ever seen, and I was thinking that it had to be from the same deer making the big tracks."

Right before the bow season was to begin, Travis spotted the unmistakable tracks of "wide toes" again. His anticipation for the coming archery hunting season rose to a new high! But first he had something else to do.

Travis Harvill arrowed the largest typical buck in Georgia last season. It scored 155 6/8 P&Y points. Photo by Steve Ruckel

For months, he had been planning his first elk hunting trip to Colorado. Along with his father, Travis spent the last two weeks of September - which happened to be the first two weeks of the Georgia archery season - in the Rocky Mountains. On the second day of that hunt, he arrowed a nice 5x5 bull elk at 12 yards. Impressive as that feat was and despite the beauty of the mountains, his thoughts continuously turned to the pine trees and cotton fields of Peach County, Ga.

"The whole time I was in Colorado, all I could think about was getting home so I could hunt that big buck," said Travis.

The minute he returned, he started planning his strategy, which was based largely on where he had seen the big tracks and where the shed was found.

"I had two or three spots picked out to hunt," Travis recalled. "But I talked with a good friend of mine, David Billiter, who works for Chuck's Bait and Tackle in Warner Robbins, and he told me I ought to lay off of him until the rut so I wouldn't push him out of the area."

For that reason, Travis decided to hunt the early part of the season on another part of the property. He had placed his climbing stand high up in a large hickory surrounded by mature hardwoods. During several hunts from this stand, he had seen a number of does and a small 6-pointer a few times, but nothing that he wanted to shoot.

On the other hand, this situation offered another opportunity for Travis. Back in the early part of the summer, he had bought his wife, Starr, a compound bow and taught her how to shoot it. She had gotten pretty good with it but hadn't had many opportunities to go hunting.

The afternoon of Oct. 26 was cloudy and warm with a misty rain in the air. Travis thought this might be a good time to take Starr hunting - maybe deer would be moving and she could get a shot at the 6-pointer he had been seeing from his stand. Little did he know the kind of luck she was about to bring him!

By 5 p.m. Travis and Starr were sitting almost side by side in separate stands some 35 feet off the ground. They were looking down onto a fairly open area that was surrounded by thicker brush. Travis positioned Starr on his left and then sprayed a few squirts of buck lure into the light breeze, which carried the scent behind and to the right of them.

"I kept looking to the left," Travis said, "because that's where the 6-pointer usually came out. By about 6:15 we hadn't seen or heard anything. Then I happened to look over to my right, and he was just standing there about 25 yards away. I turned back to my wife and whispered, 'Don't move - there's a big buck over here.'"

Travis slowly swiveled his head back around and saw that the buck had moved a few steps closer, his head up and upper lip curled as he tested the air. He could count at least 10 points on the heavy rack. The big whitetail seemed suspicious but took a couple more steps, stopping with a sapling blocking the spot behind the shoulder that Travis would normally target.

"By then I had stood up and pulled back," he said. "I had it right on his shoulder and was waiting for him to take a step. But he wouldn't move. It probably was only a matter of seconds, but it felt like forever. I finally decided I was going to shoot right beside the little tree."

Travis released and saw his arrow enter high, angling down into the shoulder. The big buck flinched, then turned and ran back in the direction he had come from.

"I knew I hit him because the arrow was sticking out when he ran off," Travis recounted. "After I jumped up and down a few times, we came down out of the stands and started walking toward where the buck had been standing."

By now, darkness was approaching and there was no blood visible on the ground. However, they could see where he had scuffed up the leaves as he ran off and had little trouble following the signs of his frantic retreat to where he lay less than 50 yards away.

Having dutifully followed Travis' command to "freeze" when the buck first appeared, Starr never saw the deer when he shot it. She now looked down at the massive 252-pound whitetail as Travis lifted its head for a better look. The 10 evenly matched points and three short stickers made for a most impressive set of antlers, which later were officially measured for the Pope and Young (P&Y) Club's all-time record book. The bow-killed deer tallied 160 4/8 gross inches. When deductions of 1 6/8 inches for asymmetry and the three abnormal points were factored in, the final net score was 155 6/8 P&Y points. The minimum scores for the P&Y all-time record book are 125 for typical racks and 155 for non-typical. In fact, this buck could have made the record book in either category!

Not only was Travis' buck the best ever taken by bow in Peach County, but it was also the top typical bow kill in the state last season. As such, it won the Typical Archery Category of the 2002 Georgia Big Deer Contest. This award, sponsored jointly by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, Georgia Sportsman magazine, and the Georgia Outdoor Writers Association, recognizes the best bucks taken by bow and arrow and firearms each year.

Oh, and did I mention that Travis walked within two feet of a coiled 6-foot timber rattler when he and two of his friends came back later that evening to drag the buck out? Unfortunately for the snake, he became Travis' third trophy of the fall, as well as a significant and storied part of one outstanding hunting season.

He and a few of his friends have hunted the same 1,000-acre tract of land since 1987. Located along the Flint River in Macon County, the property is a mixture of bottomland hardwoods and planted pines of various ages, with a few small openings where log-loading decks had once been. Only bowhunting is allowed, and because Macon County has a mandatory minimum outside spread of 15 inches, no immature bucks could be taken. That was fine with David.

"I try to shoot something that would be a personal best for me, or at least a better-than-average deer," David said. "My goal this year was to shoot nothing less than a Pope and Young!"

He had reason to be optimistic because one of his hunting buddies had spotted a huge buck on the property last year but couldn't get a shot at it. He described it as a big-bodied deer with very heavy antlers that swept forward.

David took vacation from his job to hunt the first week of November, anticipating that the rut would be going strong then, as it is most years. Not only did his scouting early that week confirm that the deer seemed to be moving, but it also led to his finding a prime feeding area.

"I kind of stumbled across this spot in a creek bottom that had a huge white oak and the acorns were just raining down," he said. "There were trails leading in there you wouldn't believe. I hunted there morning and evening five or six days straight and saw deer every time I went, including 12 to 15 bucks."

In the pre-dawn of Nov. 8, David stepped out of his house and was greeted by temperatures in the upper 30s, an overcast sky and a breeze already rustling the leaves. He met his hunting partner, Sonny Ard, and by 6:30 he was in his climbing stand 25 feet up the same sweetgum he had sat in all week.

"As it started to get light, I noticed two does feeding around on the acorns," David recalled. "I sat there watching them for a while, then realized they were looking back behind me. I turned and another doe was coming down the hill, but I didn't see anything else. A few minutes later, the does were staring up the hill again. This time when I turned to look, there he was about 18 yards away!"

It was a big-bodied deer with a massive rack of at least 10 points. When the buck momentarily stepped behind a tree, David stood up, grabbed his bow and drew back. As the buck stepped past the tree, David released and watched his arrow strike behind the deer's muscular shoulder, a few inches farther back than he was aiming. At the shot, the big whitetail jumped to the side a few yards, and then stood looking at the does, as if he were wondering what they had done to him. David reached for another arrow as the deer calmly walked off, not offering a second shot.

Because he was unsure about the effectiveness of his first shot and he didn't want to push the buck too soon, David stayed in his stand until 10:30. On the ground, he found blood where the buck had stood, and while the drops were sporadic he managed to track the wounded deer some 300 yards before he lost the trail and decided to get some help.

A little while later he and his hunting partner, Sonny, managed to pick up the trail again and followed it another 200 yards before the blood disappeared entirely. The rest of the day they crisscrossed the area, looking for any sign of the buck, but to no avail. David came back the next day and walked a large area in every direction and still found nothing. Not one to give up easily, he returned the third day and, after an hour and a half, found the buck some 400 yards from where they had lost the trail the first day. Unfortunately, the coyotes had found him first, and both the cape and meat were ruined.

While the outside spread was barely over the 15-inch minimum, the combination of beam length, tine length and exceptional mass, along with good symmetry, yielded a gross P&Y score of 153 3/8 and a net score of 148. That score, which was much greater than David had originally guessed, made his outstanding buck the No. 1 bow-killed buck ever taken in Macon County and places it No. 21 in the all-time state records.

Billy Whittaker's Seminole County 10-pointer, which was still in velvet when he arrowed it on Sept. 22, netted 138 P&Y points and became the only bow-kill P&Y whitetail listed in that county's rankings.

On Nov. 27, Jason Nesbit took a fine Lee County 8-pointer that scored 127 3/8. It was only the second P&Y to be recorded from the county and holds down the No. 2 spot.

Next month we will profile the best bow bucks from North Georgia.

Steve is also a member of the Georgia Outdoor Writers Association and a frequent contributor to Georgia Sportsman.