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They're getting a little frisky. I captured this trail camera sequence of two bucks squaring off in a ladino clover / chicory food plot just before dark, last Thursday evening. The camera is a Cabela's Outfitter model that I've been using for two seasons. It's an excellent unit for the money, and one of my go-to cameras for monitoring field edges. —Will Brantley, hunting editor #RutReporters2016

They're getting a little frisky. I captured this trail camera sequence of two bucks squaring off in a ladino clover / chicory food plot just before dark, last Thursday evening. The camera is a Cabela's Outfitter model that I've been using for two seasons. It's an excellent unit for the money, and one of my go-to cameras for monitoring field edges. —Will Brantley, hunting editor #RutReporters2016

Field & Stream Magazine

The Legend of Cowhorn // by Dave Hurteau After dinner I overheard the guides talking. They were worked up about something. Apparently, one of them had seen Cowhorn. “Who’s Cowhorn?” I asked. “Dude, Cowhorn is a legend.” Since they’d first seen Cowhorn, years ago, the buck had only ever grown a spike on his left side—a heavy, sweeping dagger, like the horn of a cow. His right side, meanwhile, was so enormous that any hunter who saw him, no matter how discriminating, let fly. Cowhorn, the guides said, was the most shot-at buck in the camp’s history. During the previous fall alone, when the 6-year-old deer was already declining, hunters took no less than 11 cracks at him—all with scoped rifles, a couple under 50 yards. Not one shot parted a hair. “That buck can’t be killed,” one of guides said flatly. Suddenly, I really wanted to hunt this deer. The guides warned me that he’d gone way downhill since last year—wouldn’t score much now. That didn’t matter. I wanted Cowhorn. *** The wind pushed curtains of light snow across the Nebraska prairie outside the window of my box blind. It was 300 yards to where the wood’s edge dropped to the riverbottom. Through the binocular, I spotted a horse’s body with a deer’s head. The buck was bedded 20 yards into the timber. I could see the white sheet covering his back, and could just make out a dusting of flakes capping his forehead and fringing his ears and antlers. Then I saw the long, curved horn. It was a makeable shot, but I waited. Eventually, Cowhorn stood up and vanished behind a wall of brush. Ahead of him, a doe stepped out and fed into the meadow. It was the peak of the rut. “Get ready,” said my guide, Caleb, sitting to my left. Suddenly the storm picked up. Then, through the screen of parachuting flakes, in the footsteps of the doe before him, the buck stepped onto the prairie. “That’s him. That’s Cowhorn,” Caleb whispered. The guides had been right the night before; now that the buck was standing in the open, I could see through the scope that his rack wasn’t very impressive. But its configuration was unmistakable. “Two hundred and seventy-five,” said Caleb. “Whenever you’re ready.” I knew I’d made a good shot. “You hammered him!” yelled Caleb, who’d been watching through his binocs and saw the deer mule-kick before crashing, tail tucked, back into the woods. He lowered the optics and snapped his head at me, incredulous. “You just killed Cowhorn! I never thought it could happen!” There was no blood where the buck had been standing, but that didn’t worry us. We got on the scuffed tracks and followed them a short ways over the prairie, to the edge of the timber. That’s where I glanced up—and stopped dead. Down on the riverbank, not 40 yards away, stood Cowhorn. There was no doubt about it. The late sun had turned the river’s surface into a glittering pane. Perfectly silhouetted against it was the buck’s clean, tall-tined right side—and that crazy, heavy hook on the left. Only the rack looked bigger now. Before I could make a shot, Cowhorn was gone. He might as well have sprouted wings and flown away. At the bank there wasn’t even a hint that the buck had been hit. No blood. No missteps in his tracks. Caleb and I walked back up to the prairie, back to the beginning, to make sure we hadn’t missed anything. Weaving through a patch of low pines, we practically stumbled on the dead buck. His right side, sticking up above the snow, had four clean points; the left was jammed under a blowdown. I grabbed the rack, Caleb lifted the log, and 1 inch at a time, we unsheathed a long, curved dagger. We stood there, perplexed. Nothing made sense. But then we took a closer look. The rack was too small, and the long, sleek body wasn’t that of a grizzled survivor. “Oh my God,” said Caleb. “You killed Cowhorn Jr.” *** Caleb felt bad that he'd let me shoot the wrong buck and kept apologizing. But I was happy—even a little unexpectedly so. “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “We’ve got a hell of a story to tell back at camp.” Once he knew he was off the hook, he relaxed and couldn’t help expressing what he really felt. Which was O.K., because I was feeling it, too. “Dude,” he said. “Cowhorn lives!” + Read more stories from deer camp: fieldandstre.am/DeerCamp

Field & Stream Magazine