Woman's three-year hunt for big buck pays off

For three years, it was a game of cat and mouse.

Anytime Pamela Brooker spotted a certain big buck while feeding her horses, she didn’t have a gun. And when Brooker had her gun, the white-tail was nowhere to be found.

On Nov. 24, as the Paradise Valley woman fed her horses with her Remington 700 308 by her side, the game came to an end. Brooker took the 8-by-9, 200-pound white-tail.

“He was a worthy opponent,” Brooker said about the buck, whose non-typical antlers had a 22-inch spread and grossed 168 1/8. “For three years I tried to bag this buck. He’s always been more clever. He watched me closely. He’d show himself with reservation.”

Brooker for two years in a row didn’t see the deer until the first week in November. She had spotted it while horseback riding.

“He wouldn’t run away,” she said. “He wasn’t scared.”

This year, when the deer didn’t show until about Nov. 20, she figured someone had killed it. Then, on the morning of Nov. 24, Brooker heard two bucks fighting.

“I knew he had returned,” she said. “I got very determined. I put the rifle close by me and acted as if I was doing my chores.”

Forking hay from the tractor, Brooker spotted the deer.

“I grabbed my gun and he looked up,” she said. “My knees were shaking and my heart was pounding. He saw me. I saw him, but this time I had the gun. He knew it and got nervous.”

Brooker fired one shot and took down the moving deer.

“I felt a mixture of ecstatic and disbelief and great admiration for my worthy opponent,” she said.

Brooker noted that last year there was a lot of hunting pressure on this buck. On one occasion, the deer was in a hay field surrounded by hunters.

That buck made it into a thick cover by a pond, and he layed right down where he remained for well over two hours,” she said. “When it was safe, and he had outlasted all the hunters’ patience, he got up and crossed the road, eluding everyone.”

“I had been watching this whole effort and was rooting for the buck that day,” Brooker added. “He was pretty clever.”