MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — A Morgantown hunter who spent a lot of time pursuing at least one nice buck in Monongalia County last fall recently learned his efforts were all in vain.
Rick Bebout had permission to hunt a Monongalia County farm which until the 2022 season he had largely used only for the antlerless hunting season. However, during the late summer of 2022 he decided to give it a shot during the archery season for the first time.
“I had a few good bucks on camera, including a really nice eight pointer and I thought it would be worth the effort,” he explained in a recent conversation for West Virginia Outdoors.
As he made his preparations, the landowners shared with him a story about having to cut a nice buck out of one of their electric fences a few weeks earlier. The fence was made of a braided nylon rope with the electric element woven through the fabric. The fence is specifically made for use with horses and is easy to move and reconnect using nothing more than an easily tied knot.
However, when a whitetail buck’s antlers get tangled in the material, it’s an entirely different set of circumstances.
“The deer was going crazy, but they still managed to cut him out of the fence and he took off. They were lucky just to get him free, but he took off with a good gob of that stuff still wrapped up in his antlers,” Bebout explained.
Rick set up a couple of stands, played the wind, watched the rut activity and carefully plotted each hunting trip for the entire fall. He hunted from late October through the end of the year. He was never able to connect. In fact he never saw any of the bucks he had captured on camera during any of those hunting days.
“I just chalked it up to this is the first year on this property and I’m still learning it so I didn’t think anything about it,” he explained.
Rick paid a visit to the landowner in mid-February to help clean out a horse barn as a gesture of gratitude for the opportunity to hunt the land. Once done, the landowner asked him to ride up on the hill and take a look at something. It turned out, they had found the bones of the same buck they cut out of the fence. It was easily identified because it still had that ball of fence material ensnared in its rack.
“We got up there and low and behold there are two dead bucks. They are completely clean, the coyotes and critters had cleaned them down to skeletons and scattered the bones. But there, connected by the fencing is a second buck, a real nice 9 point,” said Bebout.
He stared at the incredible site and could only envision the horrific death both of the bucks must have endured trying to earn domination of the territory.
“The story you can tell was these two bucks were either sparring or got into a full on fight in October. The 9 point’s antlers got entangled in the twine in that 8 point’s antlers and the more than fought, the tighter it got and it ended up being the death of both of them,” he said.
The grim picture of the two skulls told the story better than if an eye witness was there to see it. The ball of nylon rope would have been impossible for the two bucks to undo. They likely fought to exhaustion and likely died of starvation or injury or may have fallen prey to coyotes in a weakened state. Whatever the cause, it was a grisly end for both critters.
After analyzing the unusual find, Bebout had a secondary thought about all of the time he spent in the woods last fall.
“There was many a cold, early morning I would jump out of my truck thinking this is going to be the day one of those bucks is going to walk by, not knowing the entire fall, you can’t kill deer that are already dead. I was hunting ghosts!” he said.