Hall began to berate himself; he’d never let a big-racked buck get away before -- and he didn’t like starting now. He even called his father to relate the sad tale. “I was upset,” he admitted. But he continued to hunt and grunt.

A doe approached. Hearing another deer coming, Hall looked up to see the silhouette of the buck he’d just missed. “I thought, ‘This isn’t happening!’” he said.

Believe it or not, the buck kept coming. This time, Hall got a steady rest on the side of the tree from which he was hunting and made good on the earlier miss.

With Alabama’s new three-buck per season limit, the tall-tined 7-pointer closed out Stephen Hall’s incredible season.

JANUARY MAN
As Stephen Hall’s deer season was coming to a close in early January, the hunting was just heating up for his friend Steven Posey. Posey hunts a different property just a few miles away. Stephen Hall works with Posey’s dad, Scott, and the men all share notes from the field.

You may remember Steven Posey from an Alabama Game & Fish story from September 2006 that dealt with a big buck that he’d killed by bow in October 2005. Following that big success, his 2006-07 season “was kind of bummed out.” Bucks of serious quality roamed his area, he knew, and he kept holding out for one -- but the shot just never materialized.

According to Posey, the difference going into 2007-08 was his acquisition of a new 77-acre tract of land in Jefferson County near the 120-acre family farm that he normally hunts. He also had more time to prepare for the season: scouting with a game camera ahead of time, putting up stands in advance, even cutting new shooting lanes.

He opened his season with a bowhunting trip to Indiana. He saw an eminently shootable buck, but didn’t get a shot; he ended up taking a doe.

Back home, the season slipped quickly past until January, and the rut’s arrival. Then the action really heated up for Posey.

His first success came on Jan. 10, but the hunt started out as a dud. He’d seen some small bucks, but some dogs came running through and ruined his hunt at about 3:30 in the afternoon. “I jumped in the truck and went five miles up the road to the other piece of property, where I had a tripod set up on a powerline,” Posey said.

It was on a powerline that he’d had arrowed a big 150-incher two years earlier. He loves to hunt such features.

This particular powerline had tall sage growing beneath it, with a thick pine bedding area on one side and open hardwoods on the other. An 8-pointer came out on the powerline at about 5:15 in the afternoon; Posey downed him with a shot from his .30-06 rifle. The buck had only been about 35 yards away.

Exactly two weeks later, Posey was hunting an acorn flat on the edge of a mountain when he found success again. “I had hunted this spot previously and a buck was tearing it up with scrapes and rubs,” he remembered. “I kept on hunting it, but I was real careful to get the wind right.”

He’d gotten in the woods a little earlier than when he had hunted it previously and that allowed him to go a little deeper for the setup with his portable climber. He had some Tink’s deer scent out when the bruiser came in.

“I missed the first shot, but I was granted a second chance,” Posey said. “The buck stopped behind a big oak. His neck was all that was sticking out, and I was able to shoot him right in the neck.” The rifleman’s target went down like a ton of bricks.