Mark and Terry Drury and Their Buck Deer of Brotherly Love
Day 4: Terry and Mark Drury Hunt for a Big Buck Deer
Editor’s Note: Would you give your brother the opportunity to bag a buck bigger than any deer you'd ever seen or killed in your life? Would you scout hard to pinpoint just the right place to take a deer, know that you had a 140-plus class buck to hunt, set-up a tree stand and then let your brother harvest the buck of your dreams? That's exactly what Terry Drury of Bloomsdale, Missouri, the co-owner of Drury Outdoors, did for his brother, Mark.
 "The first day we hunted we didn't have a northwest wind," Mark Drury recalls. "So we couldn't hunt the big-buck stand Terry had found. However, at 1:00 pm on the second day, the wind switched from west to northwest. When we went to our stand that afternoon, I was confident I was going to see and have a shot at a big buck, Terry's a good hunter. I knew all the trouble he'd gone through to clear a path and set the stands up. Therefore I was very confident that we'd not only see a buck, but that we would see a big buck. Because of the time of day we went to Terry's stand, instead of catching the buck coming to his bedding area in the morning, we knew we'd have to try and take him as he came out of his bedding site late in the afternoon to move toward his feeding region."
 The Drury brothers arrived at their stand site about 2:00 pm. Terry went up the tree and got the camera set-up. Mark climbed into his stand next and pulled his bow up. For 2-1/2-hours, the men sat in the same tree but never spotted a deer. At 4:30 pm, Terry suggested to Mark that he try rattling to pull the buck out of the bedding cover. "I did a light tickling sequence because we were hunting in early October, a time when the bucks weren't really fighting hard," Mark Drury says. Thirty minutes after Mark rattled, Terry whispered," Okay, you woke them up with that tickling sound. Now, crash the antlers together. Use your MAD Grunt-Snort-Wheeze call to simulate a full-blown buck battle."
Mark gave the Grunt-Snort-Wheeze call twice before slamming the antlers together to sound like a full-blown buck battle. After Mark completed his rattling sequence, he hung the antlers over a limb and sat back down on his tree stand. "As soon as I hung the antlers on the side of the tree and sat down, I looked to my right and saw this huge buck standing on the trail," Mark Drury recalls. He picked-up his bow, stood-up and prepared to make ready for the shot while whispering, "Turn the camera on, Terry. A 180-class buck is standing about 20-yards from us." Because Terry couldn't see the deer and knew his brother's reputation as a prankster, Terry didn't believe his brother. Finally Mark told him, "On my daughter Taylor's life, there's a huge buck you can't see that’s only about 20-yards from us." When Terry Drury heard Mark swear on his daughter's life, he knew this world-class prankster wasn't kidding. He turned on the camera and began to video the spot from where Mark told him the deer would come. For about 3 minutes, nothing happened. Then the buck started walking down the trail toward the two men in the tree. Looking through the viewfinder of the camera, Terry Drury realized that this buck ranked as one of the biggest bucks the two men ever had seen afield and ever had the opportunity before to shoot and video.
 "Please, Lord, don't let me mess up," Terry Drury prayed as he zoomed-in on the huge buck. As he said later, "I was so afraid I'd make a sound or move when the deer was looking and spook the biggest buck Mark and I ever had seen." As the two men watched, the huge buck pawed the earth, urinated in it and began to rub his antlers, his forehead and his eyes in the overhanging branch above the scrapes he'd just created. Then the buck once again started walking down the trail.
"After he took about 2 or 3 steps on the trail, I came to full draw with my bow," Mark Drury reports. The buck looked for a long time to try and see the two bucks battling that Mark Drury's rattling and grunting had depicted. But when the buck could see no intruders, he turned to go back to the bedding area from where he'd come. With the buck now quartering away from him, Mark got to his anchor point, put his pin sight just behind the deer’s fourth rib and grunted to stop the buck. When the deer stopped turning, Drury released his arrow. "The buck kicked his back legs up over head-high and ran as hard as he could back into the thicket," Mark Drury explains.
 The Drury brothers knew they'd just captured on film the bagging of the biggest buck they'd ever seen. "I was more excited than a football player would be who scored the winning touchdown in the Super Bowl," Terry Drury comments. "I was more excited than Mark, because I knew I'd gotten the whole hunt on video. For me, getting the footage of my brother Mark taking his biggest deer ever was a much greater trophy than if I'd arrowed the deer myself."
For more deer-hunting tips, get John E. Phillips’ Kindle eBooks "How to Hunt Deer Like a Pro,”
“How to Hunt Deer Up Close: With Bows, Rifles, Muzzleloaders and Crossbows,” and “PhD Whitetails: How to Hunt and Take the Smartest Deer on Any Property,” or to prepare venison, get “Deer & Fixings.” Click here on each, or go to www.amazon.com/kindle-ebooks, type in the name of the book, and download it to your Kindle, and/or download a Kindle app for your iPad, SmartPhone or computer.
About the Author
John Phillips, winner of the 2012 Homer Circle Fishing Award for outstanding fishing writer by the American Sportfishing Association (ASA) and the Professional Outdoor Media Association (POMA), the 2008 Crossbow Communicator of the year and the 2007 Legendary Communicator chosen for induction into the National Fresh Water Hall of Fame, is a freelance writer (over 6,000 magazine articles for about 100 magazines and several thousand newspaper columns published), magazine editor, photographer for print media as well as industry catalogues (over 25,000 photos published), lecturer, outdoor consultant, marketing consultant, book author and daily internet content provider with an overview of the outdoors. Click here for more information and a list of all the books available from John E. Phillips.
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