Spiers found one set of promising buck tracks, and started following them. The buck was checking some old scrapes. Spiers tracked the animal for an hour or so. Unfortunately, the wind was at his back.

He came out of the woods onto the secondary road near a pile of logs. He decided to sit on the woodpile -- still feeling very tired.

As he sat there, he heard antlers clicking together, and thought it might be some young moose sparring. But he wasn't sure and decided he'd better check it out.

He circled the edge of the clear-cut and cut across toward the sound. Suddenly, Spiers saw flags flying as the deer -- probably a half dozen whitetails -- winded him and ran off. And two were big bucks!

The biggest one stayed in the spruces but offered no shot. The smaller of the two went about 100 yards away from Spiers and headed across the clearcut.

As Spiers looked at the monster's unusually tall tines and dark brown rack, he got buck fever for the first time in his life.

All his nervous shaking bounced his trusty .308, so Spiers decided to lower his gun, look away and compose himself for a moment. He raised his rifle again, aimed and fired.

The deer kept running, showing no signs of being hit. The buck took a few jumps, slammed on his brakes and then went back where he had come from.

Spiers shot again, but instantly knew he had overshot the bounding buck.

His heart pounding in his chest, still uncertain if his first shot had hit the mark, he walked over to where he had first shot at the buck and found blood. Now he knew he had not missed on that first shot! He followed the blood trail into a dense stand of jack spruce where the deer had disappeared. To his surprise, Spiers found the buck dead right there!

Before approaching the downed buck, he used his radio to call Rodney. He told his cousin that he had shot a buck, and both hunters were happy. Spiers went back to the road to meet his cousin, but still hadn't yet taken a good look at his trophy.

After the hunters met up, they put everything in the truck except for Spiers' knife and license. Rodney decided to bring his gun, and they walked back to where the buck had fallen. When the two got close and took a look at its rack, they were amazed.

"Cousin, you don't realize what you have killed!"

Neither hunter had ever seen anything like this before. With his digital camera, Rodney immediately took photos of Jody Spiers and the monster right where it had died.

After some celebrating, Spiers told Rodney about the other, bigger buck, and Rodney went off after him as Spiers took care of his buck. (Rodney stayed on the buck's tracks and chased it all afternoon, but never got a shot at it.)

THE HOMETOWN REACTION
The local reaction to Spiers was enthusiastic, given that this area of northern Aroostook County produces a lot of big bucks. While Rodney was hunting, Spiers proudly showed his buck to an endless line of people that afternoon, and everyone commented that this was the biggest rack they had ever seen.