Keith had also scouted on some property the Houchins’ farm, where he’d found one spot showing quite a bit of buck sign. He put up several stands in the area, one of those a ladder stand, at a spot overlooking several fields and woodlots. “Keith pretty much did all the work,” Vonda admitted “And he reminds me of that -- quite a bit.”

Opening morning was cool, with the temperature in the mid 30s as Vonda got to her stand about 6:15. Her husband, in another stand a short distance away, called Vonda on her cell phone at about 8:30 to tell her that he’d just seen a good buck heading her way, and that she should hold off on shooting a doe. But the phone went dead before Vonda got the whole message, so she didn’t hear the part about the big buck -- and an 8-pointer stood right there in front of her.

Just about to shoot, she heard something walking through the leaves behind her. “I thought it was squirrels at first,” Vonda recalled, “but then two does walked right beside me. There was another deer behind them, and as the does continued on out into the field, he walked up to within 10 to 12 steps of where I was sitting. It was a big buck!”

Unfortunately, the buck came up on the wrong side -- but he was watching the two does so intently that Vonda was able to get to her feet and turn completely around. When she shot, he dropped on the spot.

Scored at the Big Buck Classic, the massive 5x7 Poinsett County monster netted 180 4/8 B&C points as a non-typical. Only Vonda’s second buck, it was both the largest whitetail taken by a woman during the 2006-07 season and the second-largest non-typical ever taken by a woman in Arkansas.

EDDIE BEAN
Eddie Bean, 43, a lifelong hunter who resides in the small Marion County community of Snow, owns some property near his home, and along the back side of that are some powerlines. He and his son Ethan have planted some food plots along the openings, and have also put up a two-man stand overlooking a small valley.

On the morning of Oct. 22, the last Saturday of the early muzzleloading season, the two went hunting early, as Ethan had a football game later. It was a cool morning, and fog rolled up from Crooked Creek, winding maybe a half-mile away; for a while they couldn’t see anything through the swirling mist. But finally the wind blew it away, and at about 7:00 o’clock they saw a lone doe come out of a cedar glade northeast of them and then run up the powerline clearing.

Thirty minutes later a buck came out of the cedars at the same spot, standing there broadside at about 75 yards, looking toward the waiting hunters. Eddie quickly raised his Remington model 700ML, took a deep breath, and fired. The buck whirled and disappeared, but when they climbed down from their stand and walked to the spot where he had been standing they found a good blood trail. They trailed it for only about 70 yards before finding the buck lying on a little hillside.

Until that time, neither of the hunters knew just how big the buck was, and they high-fived and hugged as they stood over the massive animal. It was a heavy-horned main-frame 6x6 with two drop tines, one of which had been broken off. With an impressive 23 5/8-inch inside spread, the rack grossed 195 4/8 on the B&C scale, but an overall lack of symmetry lowered the final net typical score to 168 5/8 points. But that figure still ranks Eddie Bean’s Marion County monster as the state’s No. 3 muzzleloader kill of all time.

CONCLUSIONS
As I said earlier, 2006-07 was a banner year for big bucks in Arkansas. Because of that sheer quantity, numerous others that could easily have been included in this article weren’t.

Among those: a pair of fine bow kills taken by Todd Norris and Rob Jones. Those two bucks scored within 1/8 point of one another, at 165 1/8 for Todd’s; 165 0/8 for Rob’s. Doug Smith took a tremendous 168 7/8 typical with modern gun in Monroe County, and Kerry Scroggins of Conway took a monster 8-point that netted 149 6/8, the largest youth whitetail.

Find more about Arkansas fishing and hunting at: ArkansasSportsmanMag.com.