Hunter finally bags his buck

[swamp]

Jerry Crawford wasn't sure if he was the hunter or the hunted during a saga that unfolded at times over the current deer season.

Crawford, a south Nashville resident, had the bow and arrow. He had the rifle. But a particular deer had a grip on him that was more powerful than any ammunition Crawford could muster up.
   

"I became obsessed with hunting this deer,'' said Crawford, a retired financial adviser. "I've never been like this with anything in my life. It's all I thought about. I went to sleep thinking about it and woke up nearly every morning at daybreak so that I could get back to hunting him."

Crawford's fixation began at an unlikely place.

He owns a 375-acre farm in Dickson where he and friends routinely hunt, but he spotted this deer, a 21-point buck, the biggest Crawford ever had seen, in the backyard of his 3-acre home near Brentwood.

After hunting the deer for what he said was a total 190 hours, a stretch that spanned bow season and more than half of gun season, after losing 12 pounds and countless hours of sleep, after reading the entire New Testament of the Bible and starting on the Old Testament while patiently sitting in his stand, Crawford killed the deer in late November.

"I had people at my church praying for me,'' Crawford said. "It really messed me up."

Said his wife, Janice: "I was really, really, really, really worried about Jerry."

Magnificent obsession

The deer cast its spell on Crawford when he first spotted it in July, when hunting season was still two months off.

"I told my wife, 'Wouldn't it be something if he stayed around here?' " Crawford said.

Crawford put out a digital camera, which took 40 photos of the buck the first night.

After sticking around for more than a week, however, the deer left the area. As hunting season approached, however, he reappeared. Crawford saw it in mid-September feeding on acorns that were starting to fall from a red oak tree in his backyard.

"I started thinking it's a possibility I may get that deer with a bow,'' Crawford said.

Sure enough, the day before bow season opened Crawford saw the deer again in his backyard.

But while practicing the night before, Crawford damaged his bow, which was out of warranty. Crawford explained his dilemma to the folks at Bass Pro Shops and they agreed to replace it. He didn't see the deer on opening day, but he saw it that night.

"He came right up 28 steps from me. ... I shot him and he took off and disappeared and then it got dark,'' Crawford said.

He and his wife followed the blood trail until 1 a.m. but never found the buck.

Crawford, who said he passed up 20 different shots at other deer, continued to look for the buck not knowing if he was dead or alive.

Wrong deer

A week later, Crawford spotted the buck. At least he thought he did.

He hit the deer with his bow, tracked it, but realized it wasn't the deer he'd been hunting.

"It was a big buck, it was a 10-pointer, but it wasn't my big buck,'' Crawford said. "I was sick. I was depressed."

It wasn't until Nov. 29, after dark, when Crawford finally saw the big buck again and shot it with a .270 short mag.

"I don't ever want to go through anything like that again,'' Crawford said. "Some good came from it. When you spend that much time by yourself it makes you take a look at yourself and figure out what is really important in life. But it also takes a heavy toll. One I could not go through again."
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