for longest recovery time on a buck. December of 1999 my wife and I were hunting across I-20 from Leeds on some USX land I had. I spotted a huge buck with lots of points on a ridge 225 yards away in some saplings. I shot him in the left side with my 264WM and he wheeled around and ran. I found blood at the hit site and tracked him into a VERY thick clearcut for 150 yards er so before losing blood. I went back for several days looking for him.

Skip forward to may er so of 2000. I was teaching a hunter ed class when a young man asked me to score a buck he found. It was a big old eight point with a lot of trash, 155" buck. He didn't say where he found it. A few days later a guy I knew called me and asked about the deer, he said the kid found it on my place at Leeds about the time I shot my deer. I had the kids name on my class roster and contacted him, then met him. He found the deer two days after I shot it in a pond about 300 yards from where I shot it, bullet hole in the left ribs. He loaded the deer on his four wheeler and took it home. I had spent several days looking in the area after he took the deer. I asked where it was now...he said it had gotten stolen. WTH? But he knew the guy who stole it...it was his cousin.

I went to the cousins place, he was living with his grandmother as his parents were both in prison. He was 16 er 17 years old. It took a few weeks to catch him at home, actually his grandmother called me about 11pm one night and said he had just come in. I went straight over there, near Irondale. She said to let her know if he was going to jail. LOL I'll call him Chris, because that was his name. Chris played hardball till I said I was going to put his ass in jail for theft, then told me the head was at his girlfriends house in Shelby Co.

I finally tracked down the girlfriends house and talked to her father who was not to pleased to be involved. He said the head had been there but had been STOLEN a few weeks before....BUT his daughter(the girlfriend) saw the guy steal it and knew him as he had been up to the house trying to buy the antlers. Dad gave me the fellas name and about where he lived. Time by now is early December 2000.

Somewhere in here I got a call from a friend that the fella had sold the antlers to another outlaw that I knew who was showing them off all over Shelby Co as his recovered bow kill. WTH?

It took a while to find the guys trailer but I was unable to find him. I finally talked to his sister in the road one evening. I told her to tell brother I would be back the next evening and he better have the antlers or I would get a warrant for theft of property. Next evening I showed up and two fellas were sitting on the trailer steps. I asked for the fella by name and he stood up. The other fella was the one who was supposed to of bought the antlers. I asked if he had the antlers....he said what antlers? I turned and started back to my truck. He asked where I was going. I said home, then to get a theft warrant in the morning for him. He said hold on, and went in the trailer and got the antlers...same ones Kevin had found and I measured. I said thank you and put the antlers in the truck and left. It had been just over a year from the shot to recovery.

And before anyone asks, I'm 100% sure it is the deer I shot as it had a big sticker/drop off the right antler when I shot it and when I recovered it.