James Field and his Monster Buck

Back in 1989, 13 years before Pennsylvania Antler Restrictions, James Field killed a buck of a lifetime. On the morning of Saturday, December 2, 1989, James and his brother Charlie decided to hunt the morning in their stands. Prior to the hunt the brothers contacted some friends and decided to meet up to do some deer drives after the morning sit, if they were not successful. Neither James or Charlie harvested a deer during the morning hunt so they were off to meet their friends for some deer drives.

With snow on the ground the men were hopeful to push some bucks to waiting hunters. The men pushed many areas with no luck! Everyone was getting hungry and wanted to get some lunch. James wanted everyone to push one last goldenrod field before they headed back for lunch. Most of the guys wanted to skip the push as they did not believe there would be any deer in the goldenrod field. The group talked about the lack of tracks, in the snow, leading to the field and figured it would be wasted energy. James had a gut feeling about this field and was the only one to post up for the drive.

The drive began with the other members in the group walking slowly through the field. Halfway through the push a huge buck jumped up and began to walk towards James. He raised his Remington 30-06, located the buck in the scope, and squeezed off a good shot. The buck went down without taking another step. James walked to the buck and stood in amazement. The rest of the group met up with James and they all stood around talking about the huge buck that was sporting 18 points.

James decided to take the buck to the local Big Buck Contest at Community Chevrolet. After the last day of the PA Rifle season, James was notified that he had won the contest. He had the buck mounted and placed it on his wall. That is where the buck would stay for 13 years until his son-in-law decided that he needed to have it scored.

Michael McKenzie, James's son-in-law, knew the buck was big but not sure how big! Michael contacted me about getting the buck scored for the Northeast Big Buck Club. I arranged to meet up with the gentlemen and score the buck for them. James and Michael waited patiently as I was scoring the deer and calculating the final numbers.

This Monster Buck had all kinds of character. It had 59 3/8 inches of non-typical growth total. The main beams were 25 3/8 and 23 7/8 which is awesome. The buck had 18 points and 32 4/8 inches of mass. The buck had a 147 5/8 inch main frame as a 7 point. Overall the buck scored 207 0/8 inches. Good enough to become the #3 Pennsylvania Non-Typical Gun Buck!