“The place where I felt the 14-pointer was using was one we’d never hunted,” Dillon said. “B.A. helped me stand up a tripod in a fence gap so I could watch a long CRP field for the buck. You could see for thousands of yards, and a big planted pine thicket bordered it.”

On Jan. 13 -- a Friday -- Dillon entered the spot to hunt the stand. The wind was howling out of the north; it had rained, and the creeks were running high. The hunter slipped going in and got wet up to his waist.

“I was cold,” he said. “About all I could think about was going back to the camp house and getting into some warm clothes.”

It started to rain. Dillon was worried that the tripod might tumble over in the strong winds. Then three does trickled out into the field in front of him, which convinced him to hang around for a while. A few minutes later, three more does came out -- and the big buck was behind them.

“I had already killed the big 6, and I guess I was in shock from the cold or something, because I wasn’t real sure he was a shooter,” Dillon recalled. “I filmed the deer with my video camera for 15 minutes before I decided that he was the man.”

When the deer got broadside at 150 yards, a single shot from the hunter’s .270 Weatherby Magnum did the trick. “I never knew this deer was in the world,” Dillon acknowledged. “I hadn’t found his sheds or anything like that -- I just knew from the sign that a big deer was in there, and I knew that the stand hadn’t been hunted.”

Needless to say, at the time the 14-pointer was a trophy of a lifetime for the young hunter.

During that same timeframe, Avery also took a trophy of a lifetime: a big 9-pointer with a drop tine, whose rack scored in the 150s, that he downed at Hood Bottoms in Aliceville while he was hunting with their good friend Duncan Moore.

“Hood Bottoms is right across the river from Westervelt,” Dillon explained. Westervelt Hunting Lodge is a legendary 14,000-acre tract that consistently yields impressive whitetail bucks.

Although he’s had great success on big bucks lately, Daniel Dillon still considers himself more of a bird hunter. He loves duck, dove, quail and turkey hunting.

“Vaughn Rives got me more interested in deer hunting four years ago when he got me in this club,” Dillon conceded. “Deer hunting is really enjoyable when you’ve got a place where you can hunt big deer.”

SUMMING UP
The cousins chipped in and shared the cost of having the “second-chance buck” mounted, and it now hangs in Daniel Dillon’s home in Vestavia Hills. High on the back of the shoulder mount you can see the leathery patch where his arrow hit; the broken arrow is mounted beneath the deer.

“It’s not the biggest buck either of us has ever killed,” Dillon admitted. “But it sure is a neat story. I doubt there will ever be another buck that is so special to both of us.”