The Grant Buck
"Tremor"
Orange County 10-Point

By Chris Grant

I knew about this buck for the last three years. I even had pictures of him sent to me by friends around the town that I hunted. For the last two years I tried to get permission to hunt him, but was unsuccessful- even by my own cousin, may I add. Who happens to live 500 yards from where I shot him.

While coaching at my gym two afternoons before opening day of archery I had a member show me picture of these two "huge" bucks in his back yard every day. Once I took a look I knew it was the big ten that I have been trying to hunt for two years now. Luckily for me the member owned quite a bit of land in this spot and was nice enough to actually let me give it a shot at this monster. Due to my work schedule I only had about one hour before opening day to scout the spot. Only walking 300 feet in the woods I could tell this is where these bucks are cruising. Rubs everywhere, both old and new, as well as a ton of white oaks that were dropping like crazy.

Opening morning rolled around the next day and sure enough here comes, the big ten. He totally caught me off guard coming in from right down wind. Luckily he didn't smell me, but wasn't he going to stop anywhere near my shooting lanes. So, no shot, but being able to see such a giant in person was enough to get my heart jumping through my shirt.

Fast forward now three days later and after two more sits with out seeing anything besides does I finally had some weather come in that I thought would get the deer up on their feet a bit. As soon as the rain stopped in the afternoon I grabbed the bow and headed to the stand. Not more than ten minutes after getting into the stand and getting all my gear set up, here comes the other big buck that travels with the ten. A solid 125 inch eight, which normally there wouldn't even be a question for me to shoot. However, knowing what was there I had to wait. After the big eight hung around for a bit he knew something was up and took off. Honestly, I think he saw me trying to take pictures of him. Woops.

Literally five minutes later out of no where here comes the ten. Luckily for me and my nerves it happened so fast I didn't have much time to get the shakes. That is until I went to full draw and he decided to stare right at me with nothing but a front chest shot. Now, I practice all year long and at 17 yards I feel I could thread the arrow right in the kill zone, but when you have a 160 class deer making "I dare you to move" eyes things change quite a bit. What seemed like twenty minutes, really it was like four. He finally turned broadside and I took the shot.

I watched the buck dump down over a tree and could see the blood coming out of him. Even seeing all that for some reason I guess your mind goes to weird places and I thought I missed. As fast as I could unstrap my safety harness I started climbing down, at about 5 feet from the bottom I jumped and ran over to find the arrow. Perfect pass through covered in blood. As soon as I saw that I ran like a little kid on Christmas to tell his parents Santa came or in my case to tell my buddy I had shot what we called the "Tremor" buck.

After I sat down and calmed the nerves with a beer or two for about 15 minutes we decided to make a plan. My buddy's father-in-law suggested that we take a ride in his car to the next development just to make sure the deer wasn't dead somewhere off the property. Well that suggestion saved me claiming my trophy from some guys that were just going to "cut the head off " when they saw it die. And these guys claimed to be hunters!! Now I guess I was brought up differently as a hunter, but if I saw a deer that just was shot and died near my tree stand I definitely wouldn't behead the thing and leave it.

Oh, well none the less I got the deer, put a tag on it,and in the back of my truck he road! As of now he has a green score of 163 net and 167 gross. We will see what he ends up at in another month. No matter what... I know that it's going to take quite a while for me to top that one.

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