Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/801177
right. What its final score would be was anyone's guess, but we hoped to have a rough estimate from a local scorer within a few days. I headed back to work, and the buck headed off to the taxidermist. Kevin Welborn, director of marketing, sales, and guest services for Joshua Creek, emailed me a few weeks after my hunt and gave me the great news. Safari Club International breaks axis deer down into several categories: native deer, captive-bred and -hunted, free-range, exotic/ introduced, typical, non-typical, etc. Because my buck was one of the free-range, typical, exotic deer (the X95 category in the SCI online record book), it placed 13th among all bucks taken with a rifle. Still in the mandatory drying period as of this writing, it will be the 14th-highest buck taken with any weapon if the measurements hold. Record books aren't what hunting is all about, but recognizing special bucks that have been taken over the years expands the celebration of their lives. Not only does the individual hunter get to relive the hunt each time they look at their wall, but every hunter who reads the record-book entry and marvels at its inspiring dimensions can dream of taking their own trophy buck. I never expected to hold a record for any species, 280 on the hoof, with long, thick "dog killers" coming off the front of his rack. One main beam was roughly 36½ inches tall, the other 37—the one-time world record, which had come off Joshua Creek's grounds a few years earlier, had been 37½ by 37½ with a total score of 176 SCI. This deer might even be one of his progeny. That record buck had been as unlooked- for as mine, even more so in fact. A friend of Joe and Ann Kercheville—co-founders of Joshua Creek and chairman and president respectively—had brought his family to Joshua Creek to stay over a holiday weekend several years ago. His son-in-law had never been hunting before, and with the Kerchevilles' permission, he took the young man on an axis hunt. They had hardly settled into the blind when a buck with ridiculously tall main beams came into view. The son-in-law shot, and with his first deer became the world-record holder for wild axis deer in the U.S. It took me several days for the magnitude of my own kill to set in. Only one buck had ever been taken off this ranch larger than mine, and it had been a world record. Mine had scored 36½ by 37 inches, far larger than any buck I had ever killed and on track to go high in the books in its own a gray object standing behind and to the left of the buck as he stood broadside and facing right. The gray object stood roughly head- high to its shoulders—a whitetail doe, fully grown. She looked more like a fawn in the presence of her polka-dotted cousin. I moved the crosshairs onto the buck and prepped for the shot. That's when I remembered the poster in the box stand encouraging the use of neck shots to anchor these stout animals. Make a poor shot and he would disappear into the brush, leading to difficult tracking for the guides—even with dogs. The crosshairs floated forward a few more inches and settled on the thickest part of the neck, just in front of the buck's blocky shoulders. One shot and the buck was down. Craig and I raced over to make sure the buck didn't rise to its feet and make off into the scrub, but no such caution was necessary. Between the .270 and the neck shot, the buck would never rise again. C raig was understandably excited, far more than I was at the time. He had seen enough bucks killed on the ranch to know this was a special animal, and with tape in hand began making the preliminary calculations. The buck weighed roughly The author and, more than likely, the 14th-largest, free-ranging axis deer taken in the U.S. 134 • S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S