While most of Alabama's deer are native, the bloodline in this part of the state can be traced to Michigan-born whitetails. While the rut might peak in January in most counties, most of the breeding activity inside the Bankhead occurs in late November and early December; go there in January, and you might not see a deer.

Coffey is all too familiar with the habits of the whitetails in his backyard. As a rule, by the time bow season opens, Bankhead bucks have already started making serious scrapes. In 2000, however, bucks were conspicuous by their absence, and, to make matters worse, so was the acorn crop. Coffey had all the time in the world for scouting, but he simply couldn't "get on" a buck.

"I didn't know what the deer were doing, to be honest," he said. "I couldn't pattern them, so I had to rely on the trails."

Well into November, after he'd been hunting and scouting nearly every day, Coffey finally stumbled across the first scrape he'd seen all season. When he found three of them under the same beech tree, he decided that the ridge inside the WMA was his most promising place. And at a range of a couple of hundred yards, he glimpsed a 10-inch-diameter tree completely ravaged by antlers, which went a long way toward setting his theory in stone.

It wasn't his usual setup, to be sure. Coffey normally hikes a mile or two into the forest in search of less-traveled areas. This beech was on a ridgetop barely 200 yards off a gravel road, the ridge rising above a sea of planted pines.

It's not uncommon for Coffey to stake out a half-dozen bucks during any given year; his choice of hunting spots can then allow for wind direction. But in 2000, his range of choices weren't exactly extensive. The scraped-up beech tree, the surest sign he's seen, was his best bet. A huge 8-pointer that he and his brother, Gary, had seen it cross the nearby road one night was responsible, he was convinced.

On Dec. 12, Coffey chose not to be in the woods at first light, since the moon had been full that night -- and the air temperature was 18 degrees. Going afield a little after 8 a.m. to confront the assault of a 20-m.p.h. north wind, he shivered for four grueling hours before calling it quits. He went home, ate lunch and fell asleep on the sofa.

When he awoke a couple of hours later, he looked outside at the pine tree in the yard that served as his "wind gauge" and saw that the gusts had ceased, making what was by then a temperature of 26 degrees a little more bearable. By 3:00 in the afternoon, the hunter was sitting in his stand up a white oak overlooking the three scrapes -- the only climbable tree within 50 yards of the beech -- having spread some estrous-doe urine around before ascending to his perch.

An hour later, the sound of a stick breaking cut through the roar of a nearby waterfall. As he'd suspected, the source was a big-bodied whitetail 90 yards away at the top of the falls. Coffey couldn't see antlers, but he was almost certain that the deer was a buck. He stood up and attached the release to his bow, reasoning that if the animal got any closer, the likelihood getting away with that kind of movement would be very low.

The deer was heading for the scrapes, keeping its head low. When it was considerably closer, it shook its head from side to side -- revealing, for the first time, a massive set of antlers. Big, to be sure -- but also … weird. "'What kind of rack is that?'" the archer recalls wondering.

As stunned as he was confused. Coffey -- ever the pessimist -- figured that the story was fated to end badly; he was quite sure that the monstrous whitetail would stop just out of range or turn and head off in the opposite direction. "I'm thinking, 'This ain't going to work,'" he recounted.

A shot at a deer of that caliber? Too much to hope for, he felt. But the buck kept coming, heading directly for the scrapes.