Shawn went 20 more yards by a big tree and a brushpile -- and then the whole brushpile shook as the buck got to its feet. "It jumped a ditch, and I shot one time with my BAR .30-06 and hit it behind the shoulder at about 140 yards," Marquis stated.

Having done lots of cutover walking over the years he knew he had to make the most of the first good shot he got. It knocked the buck down immediately.

"I thought it was just a pretty good deer, but my buddy went straight to him and hollered, 'Lord have mercy! This is one of the biggest deer I've ever seen in my life!'"

Marquis had killed a 140-class buck in Illinois earlier in the season. He asked his buddy if it was bigger than that and Shawn told him it would dwarf that deer.

"I finally got down there to it and it looked like it had a rocking chair on its head," Marquis said.

He kind of hated to tell that he walked the deer up.

"But I've killed a lot of big bucks over the years and I can tell you that these 5 and 6 year old bucks are a totally different game," the hunter pointed out Marquis said they don't walk much in daylight hours once they get that big, as anyone with a game camera can attest.

A flood of emotions swept over Marquis after he took the big buck. He thought about another best friend, Jeff Terry, who had found the place with him the season before, but had died in September before hunting season came in.

He also thought about his dad, whom he lost in a car accident on a hunting trip when he was just 15 years old.

"It was just very, very emotional for me," he admitted. "I've got a lot of places to hunt and a lot of good friends I enjoy hunting with and I just feel blessed."

The big buck green scored 181 3/8 on the Boone and Crockett Club scale.

Marquis said the big buck corridor in Lamar County seems to be from about Vernon and Sulligent to Winfield and Guin, including the Crossville area.

"I know some hunters who feel that the next state record will come from that area," he said. "Genetics is part of it and there aren't so many deer that they're crowded."

MARION COUNTY THICK-HORNED BUCK
Marion County is just north of Lamar and it too is an excellent place to kill a better-than-average buck. Just ask Matt Oden of Birmingham, an emergency room RN who lives in the Pleasant Grove area of Jefferson County.

Oden grew up hunting in the Black Belt of southern Alabama, but made the switch to northwestern Bama a few seasons back and said he hopes to hunt the region for the rest of his life.

On Dec. 29, Matt killed a mainframe 8 with stickers giving it a total of 14 points. It scored 165 7/8 B&C non-typical and 159 typical. But what's so incredible about the rack is that the mass of its 7-inch bases carries throughout the antlers.