The Huntsville Item Reported First:A tip of the hat to East Texas deer hunters Bryan and Nicholas O’Neal. The father-son team from Quitman recently closed out a month-long game of cat and mouse with a big ol’ Smith County buck of incredible proportions that are unlike anything hunters in these parts have seen or heard of in a very long time.
Great as the buck is, the humorous story behind it may be even better.
No rattlin’ horns, grunt calls or scent potions here, folks. This one is a wholesome tale of family, blown opportunities and occasional frustration stemming from a dad’s insatiable desire to help his 9-year-old get buck blood on his hands for the very first time and ultimately cultivate a deer hunting partnership for life.
A typical 12-pointer, the buck was green scored for Texas Big Game Awards at 186 5/8 gross and 180 4/8 net by Derek Spitzer, an official TBGA scorer and Wood County game warden with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.
The massive rack will be re-scored after a mandatory 60-day drying period required for entry into the Boone and Crockett Club’s all-time records. As it stands now, the buck is poised to crush the long standing Smith County typical record of 170 2/8 set on Thanksgiving Day in 2005 by Clyde Weaver of Tyler.
Additionally, the O’Neal buck will rank as the No. 2 low fence typical of all-time for East Texas behind Jeff Capps’ 183 7/8 inch Angelina County whopper taken in 2000 and the highest-scoring open range typical reported statewide since 2010. TBGA’s David Brimager says the deer should rank No. 14 among the best TBGA open range typicals recorded since the program began in the early 1990s.
It takes a world-class set of antlers with some magnificent dimensions to run with that sort of company, and the Smith Co. bruiser has it all. For starters, the buck grew main beams measuring 26 1/8 and 26 inches; G2s, 13 5/8 and 11 4/8 inches; G3s, 11 5/8 and 11 6/8 inches; G4s, 9 3/8 and 10 5/8 inches; and G5s, 5 4/8 and 3 1/8 inches. The inside spread on the buck was 18 2/8 inches and it had more than 32 inches of mass measurements.
The only place the rack was lacking was in its brow tines (3 3/8 and 3 2/8 inches). But even then it is still a magnificent deer. Perhaps Spitzer summarized it best when he called the buck “a freak of nature,” especially since it was estimated to be only 4 1/2 years old.
Most deer hunters would have choked on their snuff at mere sight of such a deer, but not Bryan O’Neal.
“To be truthful, I had no idea what I had until I showed the deer to a friend of mine, Brad von Reyn,” O’Neal said. “When he saw the rack he was like ‘Dude, you gotta get somebody to look that this buck. He’s way bigger than you think.”
In case you’re wondering, the 34-year-old hunter hasn’t spent a whole lot of time in the woods in comparison to most guys his age.
He killed his first deer — a doe — just seven years ago. He has shot a handful of deer since, but has never been up close and personal with a buck remotely close in quality to the one he shot just before sundown on Nov. 13.
Admittedly, O’Neal says deer hunting to him has always been more about the outdoor experience than it has the antlers.
“I get excited about seeing a good buck, but I just like seeing deer and being out there more than anything else,” he said. “That’s something I hope to pass on to my son. I didn’t get to hunt much when I was young because my dad didn’t take the time to take me. It’s not that he abandoned me or anything like that. He was a truck driver and he worked all the time, so I just didn’t get to go very much when I was growing up.
“That really bothered me throughout my early adult life, because I realized how much I enjoyed hunting and how much I missed out on. I don’t want that to happen to my son.”
O’Neal doesn’t just talk the talk. He walks the walk.
A service manager at a Mineola car dealership, O’Neal also heads up the local Whitetails Unlimited chapter. The organization makes regular contributions to various youth hunting programs in the area in order to help make it possible for kids who might not otherwise have the opportunity to go hunting or learn about the outdoors.
“Our kids are the future of our sport,” he said. “That’s important to me. That’s why I’ve really made it a point to get my son involved in hunting at a young age. He shot his first dove this year, and he wanted to shoot his first deer this season.”
Opportunity knocks
The youngster got a grand opportunity about mid-morning on Nov. 6, the second day of the 2016-17 season. O’Neal said he and his son were running late that Sunday morning and didn’t make it to their stand — a roomy 8-by-8 box — until well after daylight. They had been sitting there for about an hour when a doe appeared with a young six-pointer on her heels. Moments later, what looked to be legal eight-pointer showed up.
“I told Nicholas to get his gun up and get ready, this was his chance,” O’Neal said. “Then I looked over to my left and saw this big buck on top of a ridge, probably 140 yards away. All I could see were massive horns. I’d seen a deer with tall antlers from the same stand on Saturday morning, but he was in some thick brush about 100 yards away and couldn’t tell a lot about him.”
O’Neal said he convinced his son to pass on the eight-pointer in hopes that the bigger buck might come closer and offer him a shot. Read more at this link – http://www.itemonline.com/sports/outdoors-bryan-and-nicholas-o-neal-bring-down-b-c/article_28679c95-d567-5014-beb7-64f4942f1f7a.html