Make no mistake -- this buck was worth their effort! The beautiful rack is a clean 4-by-4 typical, with long brow tines and 12-inch G-2s. It was scored at the Big Buck Classic at 167 2/8 net typical points. That figure makes Heavner’s muzzleloader monster the largest main-frame 8-point ever killed in the Natural State!

BLACKPOWDER BRUISER
I didn’t think the phone number I dialed sounded familiar, and when the man I had called answered I found out why. Jim Puckett lives in Fenton, Mich.

So how did a Michigan resident kill the largest non-typical blackpowder buck in Arkansas last season?

“I used to work with a fellow from down there,” Puckett explained, “and one year he invited me down to do some deer hunting. I liked the country, became friends with the other guys in the hunt club and have been coming down there since 1993.”

A union electrician with IBW, Puckett went on to say that he was a life-long deer hunter who hunted every chance he had “back home.” Over the past 30 years, Puckett has taken several nice whitetails, but none of those compare to the Yell County bruiser he took on Oct. 14, the second day of the Arkansas early blackpowder season.

“I was hunting from the ground along the edge of a small clearing within an overgrown clearcut,” Puckett said. “I had actually seen the buck the year before on a nearby food plot, and the other guys in the club had lots of trail cam photos of him.

“Looking back, that clearcut was so grown up that I guess he felt perfectly safe in it. But that day, along about 20 minutes before dark, he came slipping along the edge of that little opening I was watching. I got my T/C Encore up and shot when he was about 50 yards away. He went down in his tracks!”

Jim’s high-racked 17-point, with 11 points on the right and 6 on the left, was officially scored at the Big Buck Classic at 187 2/8 net non-typical points. That makes it the state’s new No. 2 all-time non-typical killed with blackpowder.

THE FUTURE OF HUNTING
“My brother Stuart and I scouted a 60-acre property my folks own in Van Buren County,” said Paige Gilmore. “We found some tracks in one place (that) were big enough that a .30-06 shell would fit inside them. We thought it might be a buck.”

Gilmore is a 16-year-old who attends high school at North Little Rock Old Main, where she does all the things that high school girls do, but she and her older brother also head to the woods at every opportunity. The 2007-2008 season was her first year to deer hunt, and she already had taken a “small 8-point” during gun season.

“We put up a pop-up blind at a spot where there was a funnel, a place deer passed through on their way to feed in some fields,” Gilmore recalled. “We put limbs on top of it to make it look more natural.”

On Christmas Day, the brother and sister team hunted their stand in the morning but didn’t see anything. After taking a break for Christmas dinner, they got back to their stand about 2 p.m.

“I guess it was about 4:30 p.m. when we heard a rustling behind us,” Gilmore said. “At first all we saw was a deer’s nose, then his antlers. He was huge!”

He was also looking right at them. With thudding hearts, Gilmore and her brother waited until the buck started moving. Then she lifted her crossbow and fired when the unwary animal was about 20 yards away.

“He ran -- a long ways,” Gilmore said. “It was getting dark, so we went home to let my mother know we weren’t lost, then we went back to look for him. I wasn’t about to let my buck get eaten by coyotes, so we kept looking until we finally found him about 1 o’clock in the morning.”