Hunter Nick Dean Harvests 17-Point Mountain Whitetail After Four-Year Chase

Public-Land Virginia Hunter Tags Massive 17-Point Buck After Four-Year Chase

Nick Dean spent four years playing cat-and-mouse with a giant whitetail buck on a rugged, steep public mountain in Virginia, an area where deer populations run lower than in some other areas of the state. On October 28, following a missed opportunity just 24 hours earlier, the excavating company worker finally harvested the massive 17-point buck after climbing 2.5 miles up the mountain, Outdoor Life reported.

“I like hunting the mountains and I’ve been doing it there for 20 years,” Dean told Outdoor Life. “Though local deer densities fall short of certain other regions within the commonwealth, trophy-class bucks still roam the terrain.”

A Multi-Year Pursuit on Tough Terrain

The public hunting area where Dean pursues whitetails is rocky, steep, and difficult to access. Unlike in clubs where Dean can only take one buck, public mountain tracts involve the challenge of taking a mountain buck.

Dean’s history with the giant whitetail stretches back multiple seasons, documented by trail camera photographs. The pursuit nearly culminated a couple of years ago during the muzzleloader season when Dean encountered the animal, but his black-powder rifle malfunctioned and misfired, allowing the buck to escape.

The tension peaked on October 27 of this year. Dean spotted the buck at 40 yards following a doe, but dense mountain laurel blocked his shot. Operating in tight quarters with a crossbow, he ultimately decided to pass on the shot.

The Climax on the Ridge

Unyielding, Dean returned to the mountain the very next afternoon. Having worked that morning, he arrived at the site in the mid-afternoon, climbed 2.5 miles up the mountain, and ascended about 15 feet in a tree within a thick area roughly 100 yards from where he had seen the whitetail the previous day.

At around 5:30 p.m., amid the sound of squirrels chattering and scampering through leaves, a noise behind him broke the silence. Turning, Dean spotted the buck standing in a thick growth of mountain laurel.

“All I could see was his rack,” Dean recalled. He pushed the safety off his Ravin crossbow. The buck looked right at him, staring without moving for about a minute.

When the deer finally put its head down and took a few steps into an opening, Dean raised his crossbow, put the scope crosshairs behind the shoulder, and pulled the trigger. The buck whirled and took off into a massive thicket of mountain laurel cover.

Recovery in the Laurel

Initial inspection yielded a little blood and no arrow, leaving Dean uncertain about the shot’s lethality. After calling his father and a buddy who knew where he was hunting, the group used lights after dark to navigate the thick cover.

Dean’s 100-grain Beast expandable two-blade broadhead proved exceedingly effective, the tracking crew discovered, having successfully punched through both lungs and the animal’s heart.

“It was so thick we almost stepped on my deer,” Dean said. Due to the laurel cover and steep rocky area, there was no dragging the deer. Dean, his father, and his friend dressed, quartered, and packed the buck out like it was a Western hunt for elk.

Estimating the live weight at about 180 pounds, Dean believes the 17-point buck is perhaps 7.5 years old, pending official state aging. The taxidermist later found a wound on the buck’s neck while caping the animal, which Dean attributes to a grazing shot he took at the same buck the previous year when he jumped a doe and encountered the whitetail at 60 yards.

No official measurements of the buck have been made, but Dean will eventually have it scored by Buckmasters.