David Jordening poses with the huge typical buck that he’d been hunting for several years. Photo by Tommy Garner.

As the hunter walked silently through the dawn woods near the banks of the historic Mississippi River, he could see trees silhouetted against the overcast sky. He had spent the last several years turning this place -- Two Rivers Hunting Club -- into one that he hoped would produce giant whitetail bucks. His excitement grew as he realized that today might be the day for him to come face to face with one deer in particular.

He was hoping to catch up with a beautiful long-tined buck that he’d seen only in trail camera pictures. Oh, lots of exceptional bucks had been caught on tape -- but this particular one was special, from all indications grossing over 200 Boone and Crockett points, and thus possibly challenging Arkansas’ current state-record typical. The hunter David Jordening had pursued this buck for two years without actually laying eyes on it; today, the hunter hoped, would be the day.

“I had waited on a north wind because I decided that it was the only way that I was going to be able to see the buck without being winded by the does,” he said. “I had hunted from stands many times, but the does would come in and eventually work their way downwind. They always busted me. I was going to have to change tactics to intercept the buck, and I felt that the only way to do that was to hunt on the ground with a north wind.”

A lifetime of hunting big whitetails reinforced the knowledge that mature bucks are very sensitive to human intrusion, so the hunter left his truck a mile and a half from his chosen hunting area and walked as silently as possible to an area where he felt that he would be able to intercept the big buck between feeding and bedding areas.

“It was overcast and dark,” Jordening recalled, “and all I had was a very dim flashlight to light my way.”

As he walked towards his destination in the darkness, he reflected on the time, money and effort that he’d put into Two Rivers. Over time, he and his partners Burt Robinson and Chris Canale had bought more than 5,300 acres between the Mississippi River and the St. Francis River and leased another 1,000-plus acres. The land was mostly commercial farming ground, where the only trees were along the rivers and sloughs that meandered through the property.

The next few steps sparked a lot of negative comment. Except for the very limited roster of members, all hunting on club property was stopped, which made folks who’d had use of the parcel for years extremely resentful. And when Jordening at his partners stopped running deer with dogs and stopped all commercial farming, sharp criticism came from those who didn’t understand that deriving an income from the property wasn’t a priority -- the goal was producing big whitetails.

The partners, who controlled the only two access roads to the property, hired two caretakers, Denny Green --whose status as an ex-Green Beret stopped most would-be trespassers and poachers -- and Gary Odle.

Fast forward to that fateful day, and the movement in the brush that caught Jordening’s attention. “I could hear and see animals moving close by,” he recalled, “but it was still too dark to tell anything about them. I actually thought that even though I had gotten up at 3:30 a.m. to make the long walk before daylight, I might be too late.”

Daylight was still just a promise as the hunter continued towards the place he hoped would give him a look at the big buck in person.

Though Jordening and his partners had stopped all commercial farming on Two Rivers, plenty of things still being grown would benefit the wildlife. They had planted more than 600,000 trees in what used to be crop-producing fields.