Norton tried to stop the deer, but he could not. He ended up just sitting down and sliding with the critter. When he got the buck stopped, he finally had the chance to really size it up. Norton was looking at the biggest whitetail he had ever laid eyes on in the wild.

Realizing he would never be able to get the deer out by himself, he left the woods and contacted a friend -- Grant police officer Chuck Van Etten.

"Chuck and I started dragging, but we realized pretty quickly that we'd never be able to do it by ourselves," Norton said. "I'm not old. I'm only 33. But we needed some 17- and 18-year-olds on this job."

They got teens Josh Grimes and Doug Hartman to help with the recovery. It was uphill in rugged, rocky country to get the buck out of the woods.

"We had two four-wheelers, 200 feet of rope and four men, and we moved him three feet at a time," Sam said. "I've been deer hunting for 20 years, and it was the hardest one I've ever retrieved."

Grant is a fairly small community, and word of Sam's big deer had spread even before he had gotten it out of the woods. A crowd of about 30 people were waiting to see it when Sam and the recovery crew emerged with the brute.

An old cotton scale gave the weight as 212 pounds, but Sam thinks the scales were worn out and that the actual weight was closer to 225.

"It felt like more than 250 by the time we got him out," he added.

While the body weight was impressive, it is the antlers that catch the eye.

"It's a unique rack," he explained. "It has a drop tine and the right side has a couple of points coming off the main beam at an unusual angle. It's a hard rack to photograph because of the uniqueness."

The rack is a main-frame 10-pointer, but the extra points give it 15 points total. It's not particularly wide, at only 15 1/2 inches, but the main beams are 25 inches long. The rack has good mass throughout.

"This is the first good buck I've taken in Alabama," Norton confided.

It is also the best deer by far that he has ever downed. His previous best was an 8-point that grossed around 120 B&C.

Norton said the rugged bluffs off the backside of Grant Mountain are a great place to find a buck that has grown big and old.

"I'm sure there are better bucks there," he offered. "But you've got to go into areas that have never seen a human footprint to find them."

Although the mountain buck is his best, it is not the deer he is most proud of from last season.

"My daughter, Amber, killed her 120-pound doe on this same property during the youth hunt last Nov. 13," Sam beamed. "Believe it or not, I'm more proud of that deer than I am this one."

Amber has been going hunting with her father for years now, but the youth hunt was her first time to carry a gun. She was using a borrowed .223 when she killed the doe. Later she got a .243 for Christmas, and Sam thinks there will be more deer hunts in her future.

Sam Norton is one of those hunters who just enjoy the sights and sounds of being in the woods whether he gets a nice buck or not.

It meant a lot to him to have killed his big deer in a place where the whitetails are wild and the hunting can be difficult.

"I have friends who go to preserves and take trips to true trophy areas," he said. "They ask me to go with them, but I'd feel that I was buying one rather than earning it. I feel like I earned this one."