The Hunt of my lifetime…

This hunt really started a couple of years before I ever saw that buck.

Back then I was just trying to find a place to put meat in the freezer. I ended up following this little operation on Facebook that specialized in “meat hunts” in the Texas Hill Country. The deal was simple: no trophy fees, no high-fence circus, just a shot at up to three deer in a 24-hour window for $650. If you got completely skunked, they’d bring you back. Most of what they posted were does and smaller animals, so I always thought of it as a volume/meat thing, not a trophy hunt.

Every once in a while though, they’d post a picture from a feeder and there’d be a buck that made you stop scrolling. They’d say something like, “If this guy walks in anywhere else, you’re paying a trophy fee. Here he’s part of the 3-for-$650 deal.” I watched that pattern for about two years without ever going.

Fast-forward to this Thanksgiving. I was up at my dad’s place in Pennsylvania, sitting on the couch, and I saw a new post from that page: a big axis buck, coming into their feeders regularly - a mature, heavy, fully developed animal. The kind you don’t see often unless you’re paying real money.

Right then I decided I was done window-shopping.

I flew back to Florida, landed, and immediately booked a hunt for three days out. No overthinking. I grabbed my rifle, went to Bass Pro to confirm my zero, and that’s when the first complication showed up: my scope was off, and not in a way I could quickly fix. I could still shoot with it, but I had to hold in a different place than I’m used to. In daylight at a square range that’s mildly annoying. In low light on an unfamiliar animal, that’s a problem waiting to happen. I made a mental note that I was going to have to be much more careful with my shot than usual.

The travel alone felt like its own little odyssey. I drove from Fort Lauderdale up to Tallahassee and crashed at my dad’s girlfriend’s place. The next day I pushed on all the way to Houston and stayed with a childhood friend I hadn’t seen in years. The morning after that, I drove the remaining four hours out to Comfort, Texas, checked in, and finally met the guide I’d been messaging for two years.

He showed me the blind, walked me through how everything worked, and then basically handed me the keys to the place. I had from 2 p.m. that day until 2 p.m. the next day. Up to three animals. Exotic species, so the normal deer-season rules don’t apply—more like hog hunting in terms of flexibility. After that, it was on me.

The Hill Country is beautiful in a quiet way. Rolling, rocky, open enough to see but broken enough that animals can appear out of nowhere. I got into the blind at 2 p.m., settled in, and did the usual—range landmarks, check wind, get comfortable. Daylight faded slowly into that gray zone where everything turns into silhouettes. Actual movement didn’t really start until around 7:30 p.m.

The first deer I saw came in right at that frustrating point where you can’t quite tell what you’re looking at. I picked it up in my binoculars in extremely low light. The problem was simple: I couldn’t tell if it was a whitetail or an axis. I had this tiny red flashlight they’d given me, and it barely helped. I was trying to see spots on the side—axis have those white spots; whitetails don’t—but all I could see was a mid-tone blob that might have had patterning or might have just been my eyes lying to me.

I’m not interested in shooting the wrong thing just because I drove a long way, so I passed. I texted the guide and told him exactly why: not holding out for a bigger buck, just literally unable to identify the species. I couldn’t see dots, but I couldn’t be sure they weren’t there. That’s not a shot I’m taking.

He told me to sit tight and said he’d bring more gear.

A little while later he pulled up and handed me a big, powerful red light that lit everything up nicely when he pointed it at me, plus a set of night vision. I’ve never hunted with night vision before, so that alone was a neat experience. We talked briefly, he left, and I went back to the blind with a lot more confidence—at least in theory.

Sure enough, more deer started to show up. One of them was clearly a big-bodied animal. Even in the dark, the way it moved and the width of the shoulders told me it was a mature male. I got the rifle into position, grabbed the new red light, and reached out to light him up.

That’s when everything went sideways.

The light did not behave. Instead of staying on like a normal light, it started strobing and cycling through colors like a cheap disco ball. Red, white, who-knows-what, flashing back into the blind and straight into my eyes. In about two seconds I went from “I’m about to take a shot” to “I can’t see a thing,” and my night vision was completely nuked.

By the time the light show stopped and my eyes started to adjust again, the deer was gone.

I just sat there for a second thinking, “Okay, you drove roughly 1,400 miles, spent a bunch of money, and you may have just burned your one chance because of a malfunctioning light.” The surprising part is that I wasn’t actually mad. Annoyed, yes. But the whole thing was still so ridiculous and so different from my usual hunts that I was weirdly in a good mood. I texted the guide, explained the disco-light episode, and told him I’d ride it out and see what else came in.

And then, almost on cue, I looked up and there he was.

A big axis buck stepped out, and I knew immediately it was the same deer from the camera pictures. The body size, the frame, the way he carried himself—it was him. He wasn’t just a “nice buck.” He was obviously an older, heavy, fully mature axis. The kind of animal you don’t expect to see on a budget meat hunt.

Now the challenge was not freaking it up.

I didn’t want to hit him with that crazy light again and blow him out of the county, so I went back to the smaller, weaker light and started playing a very careful game. There were other deer with him, and at first their silhouettes overlapped. In the dim light, there were moments where it looked like one big animal that was somehow three heads wide. I had to wait and breathe and let them mill around until I could clearly separate bodies.

I was not going to send a round at a muddled pile of deer and hope I hit the right one.

Eventually they spaced out enough that I could confirm what I was looking at: one buck, broadside enough, no other animals lined up in front of or behind him. I checked for antlers in the scope, double-checked through the glass, and only when I was absolutely sure that I had my target clean and alone did I think about the trigger.

In the back of my mind I was also doing the math on the messed-up scope. I knew exactly how far off it was and what kind of hold I needed. Low light, strange gear, weird night, but the fundamentals are still the fundamentals: solid position, calm breath, deliberate hold.

When everything finally lined up—ID, background, hold, and that small internal click of “this is the shot”—I broke the trigger.

He dropped where he stood.

No tracking job. No mystery. Just one big axis buck on the ground in the dark, on a free-range piece of Hill Country I’d never set foot on before that day.

Walking up on him, the first thing that hit me was how much bigger he was than what I’d prepared myself for. Photos don’t really convey mass. He was a big, healthy, heavy animal. I tried dragging him at first and realized pretty quickly that solo-dragging him any real distance was a fantasy. I ended up skinning and quartering him right there, then loading the meat into the cooler. It was real work. The kind of work that makes you appreciate every pound that eventually goes into your freezer.

The part that made it all feel different from the usual “Texas trophy story” was knowing this wasn’t a high-fence pen situation. Nobody drove him up in a truck. Nobody tied him to a tree. This was a free-range, come-and-go-as-they-please hunt, and I just happened to show up during the brief window when that particular buck was using that particular feeder in daylight and after dark.

Between the travel, the scope issue, the flashlight fiasco, the constant switching between binoculars, night vision, and two different lights, and trying to sort animals out in the dark without spooking them at close range, it was one of the more mentally engaging hunts I’ve ever done. Half the time you’re literally looking at moving shadows and trying to decide what they are, where they’re standing, and whether you can ethically send a round.

In the end, it all came together for one clean shot on a true trophy-class axis buck during what was supposed to be a simple meat hunt.

Now he’s skinned, quartered, on ice in the cooler, and I’m working my way back to Florida with a very full truck and a story I’m probably going to be telling for a long time.