LINCOLN COUNTY, W.Va. — Most hunters know those last 10 to 15 minutes of light in the day can often be the most critical moments of a daylong hunt. However, when you’ve been in the woods since well before daybreak and you’re exhausted, it’s often easy to give up. Hunter Luke Humphreys of Tornado, W.Va. is glad he did not.
“It was the last day of the Mountaineer Heritage Season and when I pulled the trigger and looked down at my watch, there were seven minutes left of shooting light on the very last day of the 2024 fall season,” Luke explained on a recent edition of West Virginia Outdoors.
The shot found its mark, but it wasn’t just any deer Humphreys had killed, it turned out to be the finale of a long and difficult four year quest.
The monster buck had first appeared on Luke’s radar four years ago when he showed up on his trail cameras at the family farm in Lincoln County. It was a relationship which would flourish for three more years and the buck grew more and more enticing with each passing season. He also became more and more difficult to hunt.
“I’ve had plenty of history with this deer. For three years I’ve been trying to take him, but it’s been a game of cat and mouse ever since,” he explained.
During the 2024 archery season, Luke had three encounters with the buck, but each time the wise old critter would take just one too many steps and get out of the shooting lane.
“I was at full draw on him three times, but I couldn’t stop him. He had that sixth sense, like most big bucks do, to take one more step behind the brush,” he said.
Listen to “Luke Humphreys — Mountaineer Heritage Buck” on Spreaker.
During the third encounter, the buck left his hind quarters exposed and Luke admitted there was a shot if he wanted to put an arrow through the deer’s paunch. He chose not to take the the gut shot and risk wounding the deer and it dying a slow death away from everybody.
“I’ve got too much respect for these whitetails to take an unethical shot, so I did the right thing,” said Humphreys.
Although Luke had kept the discovery to himself, he knew well his neighbors were hard hunters too and it was hard to believe anybody who did any amount of scouting was unaware of the major buck which was obviously covering several plots of ground. For the past three years, Humphreys walked 67 miles according to his Onyx map in search of the buck’s shed antlers. He never found a single one.
So it was the last hours of the last day of Mountaineer Heritage season in January. There was snow on the ground and the weather was freezing. Luke was contemplating all he had tried to accomplish with the buck and figured the scouting for the 2025 season would start at first light. However, his thinking changed when out of nowhere the big buck showed up and started ambling down a logging road toward Luke’s position.
“I picked him out at 50 to 60 yards. He came up from below these treetops. He came right up to me and stood on the upside of those trees for a solid minute or two then made his way across a couple of logs and came up the other side of the ravine and presented me with frontal shot at 20 to 25 yards,” he said.
Luke carefully lifted his Grandpa’s sidelock muzzleloader into place and settled the iron sights on the buck’s shoulder.
“He was turned around looking away and I let it rock and dropped him in his tracks,” said Humphreys. “I couldn’t believe it and it was an emotional roller coaster for sure after that.”
The sun had set on a four year quest just as the sun was setting on the season in the deep snow on a remote mountain in Lincoln County. It was a stark reminder the hunt is never over until the shooting light is completely gone.