Eric Flowers' Johnson County buck scored 154 P&Y. It's the top archery typical taken in the state last season Photo courtesy of Eric Flowers.

For the most part, hunters are a benevolent lot. While intensely competitive with one another, most are more than willing to help out their friends when asked. What are the odds, however, that the two largest bow kills in South Georgia last season were the result of one hunter offering his tree stand to his hunting buddy for an afternoon hunt and another archer loaning a bow to his pal the evening before the season opened? Here are their stories.

THE FLOWERS BUCK
Twenty-eight-year-old Eric Flowers glanced at the dashboard thermometer as he parked his truck. It read 90 degrees -- not too unusual for Sept. 9 in Johnson County, but considerably warmer than the Lilburn resident was used to on the second day of archery season. Nevertheless, he grabbed his bow and headed for a stand of the lock-on type that was situated in a group of pines between two woods roads and facing an old logging deck. By 4:45 p.m. the camouflage-clad archer was settled in the stand, compound bow hanging ready within arm's reach. Because of the heat and the time of the day, his expectations were low.

"I sat down," Flowers recalled, "and started playing an electronic game on my cell phone. It's something that keeps me still and occupied when I'm not really expecting anything to happen."

On the other hand, he had reason to be somewhat optimistic. Even though Flowers and seven of his friends had leased the 576-acre south Georgia farm just weeks earlier and had scouted the property only once prior to opening weekend, the habitat appeared excellent. A mixture of upland pines, cropland, hay and bottomland hardwoods, it reportedly it had been lightly hunted in recent years.

"We didn't know that buck I shot was there," Eric admitted, "but we had been seeing some good tracks, especially one track of a large deer that a neighboring property owner told us about that had a right front hoof that curled and made a distinct track. We called him 'Crooked Toe' and were going for him because he was supposed to be a wide 10-pointer."

While some of his buddies had seen a few deer from their stands in the upland areas during their Saturday hunts and on Sunday morning, none of the animals spied had been shooters. Flowers, on the other hand, had seen nothing from his stand down in the creek bottom, and he was ready for a change. All of the hunters were somewhat discouraged, but Flowers and two of his friends, Ernie Dorough and Jamie Frye, decided to stay and give it one more try before heading home.

"We were just sitting around during the day on Sunday and Jamie and Ernie decided they wanted to go sit in the creek bottom that evening," Flowers recounted. "I had been thinking all day about trying Ernie's stand and told him, if he didn't mind, I would like to sit in his stand. He said 'Go right ahead.'"

Fateful words! Little did Dorough know that a monster buck would walk by the site that afternoon -- and that his buddy would as a result get the opportunity of a lifetime.

"I had been in the stand less than 10 minutes," Flowers said, "when I heard deer walking behind me, over my right shoulder. I stood up, took my bow off the hanger and turned facing the tree. The deer got within 25 yards, and I saw tines coming through the brush. That really blew my mind, because I never thought that, with it 90 degrees at 5:00 p.m., a deer of this size would be coming through the woods."