One Heck Of A Ride

32 A s the record books of the Boone & Crockett and Pope & Young clubs were doing, the first two editions of the SCI Record Books of TrophyAnimals more than thirty years ago offered just two categories for white- tailed deer in North America -- White-tailed Deer and Coues Deer. Depending upon which expert you follow, our continent has some twenty to forty separate subspecies of whitetails, and they range in size from fifty to seventy pounds on the hoof for the smallest whitetail races in Florida and Central America to the largest whitetails weighing three hundred pounds or more in the northern U.S. states and southern Canada. Hunting writer Craig Boddington was Americas subcommittee chairman for SCI’s Trophy Records Committee in the early 1980s, and he was concerned that even the largest antlers of the smaller subspecies might not meet record book minimums. At his suggestion, the SCI Trophy Records Committee lumped North America’s subspecies into six geographical categories -- Northwestern, Northeastern, Southeastern, Texas, Coues, and Mexican -- and set minimums appropriate for each category. Since then, SCI has added categories for Columbia, Midwestern, and Anticosti whitetails in the U.S. and Canada. The single category that formerly lumped all whitetails in Mexico and CentralAmerica together has been expanded to six: Carmen Mountain, Mexican gulf coast, Mexican central plateau, Mexican Pacific coast, Mexican Texanus, and Central American whitetails. As a result, the SCI record book now has fourteen categories for North America’s whitetails. The change did not affect SCI’s requirements for its Grand Slam of White-tailed Deer award, which still requires a member to take whitetails from five different categories. I never set out to earn this Slam. However, hunting white-tailed deer was like the potato chip ads that said no one ever ate just one. I enjoyed hunting these intelligent and handsome deer so much that almost before I knew it, I had taken six different types of whitetails. A Texas Whitetail Started It All My first hunt for a white-tailed deer and my first-ever hunt in Texas took place in 1983, and it began with a Texan and a fine hunter named Wally Bolt. We were hunting Quebec-Labrador caribou and Wally and two of his buddies were in our camp. The four of us spent a lot of time talking about hunting, and when whitetails in the Lone Star State came up, Wally asked if I would like to join their annual Christmastime deer hunt followed by a Corsican sheep hunt in another county. Would I? “Where do I sign?” was all I could think to say. I was flattered to be invited and eager to hunt my first white-tailed deer. I drove to Wally’s home in San Antonio in December that same year and met him and two of his hunting buddies. From there, we drove in a caravan to a ranch in Jim Hogg County. The first day we hunted, my guide, Fred Shultz, rattled up a good buck soon after he and I got settled in a ground blind. The rut obviously was in full swing because that deer charged the sound of antlers clashing with fire in his eyes, expecting to join two other bucks in fighting for a receptive doe. I already had picked up my rifle and was preparing to shoot when Fred touchedmy shoulder and whispered we could do better. White-tailed Deer Chapter 3 Everyone’s Deer