Mark Taylor is outdoors editor at The Roanoke Times.

mark.taylor
@roanoke.com
981-3395

Mark Taylor

Outdoors coverage

• Notebook: Outer Banks beach-driving plan kicks up sand
• Outdoors commentary: Many Sunday hunting cons
• Winter tourneys invite fishermen out in the cold
• Visit our Outdoors page

The Wild Life blog

• I can focus on Sunday hunting negatives, too
• Big bass lure winter fishermen
• Ralph Barton takes a great late-season doe the hard way
• More from Mark's blog

But big scores aren't the only thing that make the contest so interesting.

Every set of antlers, bear pelt, and set of turkey spurs and beards is unique. Like fingerprints or a face, they are impossible to be exactly duplicated in nature.

The stories behind those trophies are also one-of-a-kind, interesting whether the trophy was the biggest in the show, or the smallest.

The bedroom buck

We all know the classic trophy deer story.

The hunter gets wind of, or maybe even catches a glimpse of, a monster. From that point on he is on a quest, spending endless hours in his stand, just waiting for the monster to make a mistake, which it finally does.

Jake Bousman's story isn't like that.

Having been recently laid off, Bousman was sleeping in on the morning of Nov. 6. Around 8 a.m., he stumbled out of bed, walked to the window and opened the curtains.

"I looked out and there he was," recalled Bousman, who is 19 and lives in rural Cloverdale in Botetourt County.

Wearing only shorts, Bousman put on a T-shirt and socks as he sprinted down the hallway.

"I thought the house was on fire," said his mom, Ginger.

Bousman's first mission was to retrieve his muzzleloader, which was outside in his truck. Fortunately for him, the rig was out of view of the giant whitetail behind the house.

"As I ran to the corner I was scrambling to put a [firing] cap on," remembered Bousman, who was afraid by the time he'd be done the buck would be gone.

But when he peaked around the side of the house the deer was still there.

Bousman aimed and fired, but didn't see the buck go down.

So he started running again, reloading on the way. A second shot wasn't necessary.

"He came back in the house, sweating and stuttering," recalled his mother, who watched everything out the kitchen window. "He kept saying, 'He's big! He's big!' "

He was big, with 11 points, and great mass and tine length that pushed the Virginia system score to 192 ¹⁵₁₆, second best in its class.

In the nick of time

Prior to last archery season David McPherson was checking on some treestands on his Craig County property when his girlfriend said, "There's a big buck."

"But she's said that before," said McPherson, who expected to see a decent buck when he turned to look.

The deer was better than decent, with a wide, tall rack and an awesome drop tine off its left main beam.

"I told her we'd probably never see that one again," he said.

But then on an early season morning hunt McPherson did see the deer again, though it and the 11-pointer with it never provided a shot opportunity.

On the next morning hunt from the same stand, McPherson saw a deer coming up the ridge on its way to a bedding area after a night feeding in a valley field.

It was the 11-pointer and it was coming into range.

McPherson drew and aimed.

Then a nearby movement caught his eye.

McPherson wasn't sure if it was the drop-tined buck, but its rack was bigger than the 11-pointer. So he aimed at that buck and shot.

How can he be sure his buck was larger than the one he passed up? A friend killed the 11-pointer during rifle season.

"We've been doing deer management for about 10 years," he said. "We don't shoot anything small."

A bull of a bear

For Patrick Thommavong and his father, Ou, the farm not far from James River High School is a favorite spot for small game hunting, from doves to squirrels to rabbits.

But as the pair headed out for a hunt on Thanksgiving morning, they had bigger ideas.

The landowner had been complaining about a big bear that had been ravaging the farm's corn crop.

"The farmer had an aerial picture of the farm," said Patrick, who was 13 last season. "Half the cornfield was gone.

"We decided to hold off on everything else and go for that bear."

Ou Thommavong set his son up near a corner of the field, then headed to the other end. He started walking through the field, and not quietly.

"He was barking like a dog," Patrick said, smiling.

The plan worked.

"The bear ran out and stopped about 50 yards from where I was sitting," said Patrick, who was hunting with his grandfather's 30-06 rifle.

At the shot, Patrick's father came running.

Both hunters were astounded by the size of the bear, which weighed 388 pounds and was the largest in the contest's youth category.

"I was like, 'Wow. I didn't think it would be that big,' " said Patrick, whose dad at first had another thought. "He told me when he first saw the bear he thought I had shot a cow."