This story and pic was sent into us by Ted Peck, great story and one awesome buck 
Thanks Ted!
Qusay, a.k.a. “Big Candles”, can now be seen at Nature’s Touch taxidermy studio during normal business hours on Janesville’s east side.
For five years he has ruled the night out on the cusp where farmettes border a couple larger farms in the rolling semi-rural country southwest of town.
Mature whitetail bucks which dwell in close proximity to man are almost exclusively nocturnal , with just a few short minutes of vulnerability most days during the hunting season.
“Vulnerability” is a relative term. With senses far keener than human predators and an uncanny native intelligence which allows these animals to evade danger with no palpable indications that man is in his element a saavy whitetail is truly ‘King of the Forest”.
Big Candles, his smaller kin “Uday” and “Bullwinkle”—the Grand Dragon of ‘em all—have put in several daylight appearances over the past 12 months.
Last Christmas Eve my wife and I were enjoying twilight Tom & Jerry’s with the neighbors around the kitchen table when Bullwinkle followed a parade of 13 does across the switchgrass field off of our back deck.
The deer were barely visible as they skulked towards the woodlot to the south. Except Bullwinkle, with a rack that looked like a rib cage atop his head ghosting thru the grass.
Uday, Qusay, Bullwinkle and two smaller bucks came sneaking thru the open woodlot on the neighbor’s place to the north on Sept. 13 at dawn. Their “bachelor group” promenade lasted a good 20 minutes just 150 yards away, providing ample time for study thru a spotting scope.
Bullwinkle is a 16 pointer with one drop tine and a nearly symmetrical spread of at least two feet of inside his great, heavy rack.
Big Candles displayed 10 points, with the G-1 and G-2 tines on either side of his head over 14 inches long, with Uday a smaller 10 pointer…but still a “shooter”.
Qusay’s right shed antler has been on our mantle for three years. We found it about 200 yards behind the house in the spring of 2001.
Seeing the deer in their bachelor group last September was the impetus for targeting these three deer, with a real desire at seeing Bullwinkle’s head on the wall.
But he never worked the areas I could hunt during the prime rut in mid-November or secondary rut three weeks later. Uday and Qusay made their presence known thru a series of scrapes and rubs within spittin’ distance of houses in our neighborhood.
Big Candles has a divit out of his right front hoof, clearly visible in the brands he would leave atop fresh scrapes.
Master deer hunters Kyle Allen and Ron Barefield suggested placing a time release scent dripper and urinating on these whitetail calling cards to bring the buck out of his daytime bedding area looking for a fight.
Qusay responded by tearing up nine apple, pine and white oak trees behind the house. But he never let me see those long antler tines after three entire days in the tree during November’s rut.
The first day I hunted him during December’s estrus period he didn’t show up around the stand on the neighbor’s place two houses to the north. He was in my back yard that night though, leaving that characteristic hoof print at the edge of my wife’s garden.
On December 13th the wind made this a good place to roost as well. Light snow was falling at 4:20 when those towering tines revealed his presence 180 yards away. I shouldered the Thompson-Center Encore muzzleloader with shaking hands—only to discover the scope had fogged up.
The big doe which was his companion came in unseen, announcing “danger close” with a sneeze and tall white tail quickly leading Big Candles to safety. I didn’t sleep at all that night.
Winds had switched to the northwest by 4:30 a.m. This, and the fact that Big Candles was hitting a fresh scrape behind Bob & Dot’s place to the north made changing stands a good strategy.
At first light Qusay’s guardian doe oozed thru the brushy fencerow at the bottom of the pasture 220 yards west of my stand. Several minutes later the tall rack of The Prince came down the same path.
The doe began to work my way, with Big Candles a good hundred yards back in her wake. My hands shook uncontrollably. It was tough to control breathing.
Fifteen minutes later the 220 pound buck stood broadside 55 yards in front of my stand. He dropped in his tracks.
Don Rich, jr. green- scored the rack at 168, noting genetic characteristics are identical to the buck which appeared in my column two weeks ago. Bullwinkle is still out there. But in 41 years of chasing whitetails the ’03 season is a forever memory.
