On the second day of the 2007 Zone 4 shotgun hunt, Michael Hardin, of Pollard, was deer hunting on private property just north of town. He spent the morning still-hunting, and then, with noontime approaching, returned to his truck, intending to drive to a nearby friend's house for lunch.

He was crossing a bridge spanning a wide ditch when he glanced down and saw two sets of large tracks side by side in the soft mud along the bottom. They were heading in a northerly direction, toward a thick stand of timber some distance away.

"The year before I had been doing some bowhunting in that same general area," Hardin recalled. "One day I rattled in a pretty nice 10-point, but couldn't quite get him is position for a shot. When I finally gave up I turned around and saw this buck standing there staring in my direction, maybe 100 yards away."

Hardin continued on to Brian Dunlap's house, and asked if Dunlap wanted to accompany him for a hunt that afternoon. Dunlap couldn't go, but another friend, Jack Cooper, went to get his gun and then followed Hardin back to the spot where he had seen the tracks. After getting out of their trucks, the two planned to make a drive through the tract of woods.

"We flipped a coin twice to see who would take which side of the timber," he recalled. "I wanted to hunt next to the ditch, but Jack won both times. Then he decided to work through the opposite side from the ditch.

"After he disappeared into the woods I eased along an old access road, and the buck come out of the woods some distance ahead of me. I was carrying my Browning Light 12, and I got it up and fired, then he disappeared into the ditch. I ran to a spot where I could see down into it, and he was standing with his head up about 70 yards away. I fired again, and this time he went down on the spot."

The animal's body wasn't that large for an area covered in row crops, but that only made the beautiful 6x5 rack atop his head seem larger. In February, Hardin carried the antlers to the big buck contest held as part of the Arkansas Sportshow in Jonesboro, where it was officially scored at 170 4/8 net typical points.

Stories like this one are being heard more frequently in the Natural State. In 2006-07, Arkansas hunters tagged six bucks that were big enough to make the all-time list of the Boone and Crockett Club, the unofficial "bible" of big-game hunters. In 2007-08 that number rose to seven, with a couple of more still pending. That latter number is second only to the eight all-timers taken back in 1996. The 13 Booners taken in the last two years is unprecedented in our state. Make no mistake: When it comes to big Arkansas deer, the "good old days" are taking place right now.

The 89 Natural State deer listed in the B&C all-time record book -- not counting those bucks taken last fall -- puts our state in 17th place nationwide. However, 41 more bucks, all of which have been scored at one time or another by official B&C personnel, have not been entered into the book at this time. If those deer were added, it would make the state's total 130 and would raise Arkansas to 13th nationwide.