Ahead for the 2007-08 season was a forecast for an excellent period for deer -- and a poor season for hunters. The deer wouldn't have to move as often, owing to overabundant acorns and other food sources in plenty, and heavy growths of underbrush would keep many of them well hidden. Trophy bucks like the one Dearing was later to take probably felt as if they'd been given the deer equivalent of a Las Vegas suite with all the food and pleasures that they could hope for -- and with no address on the building.

THE PURSUIT
The deer season for Dearing's ranch is established under the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department's Managed Lands Deer Permit System, which allows landowners to open the season around the last of September and continue through February. The program enables landowners like Dearing to optimize their management and harvest strategies through improved habitat projects and liberal harvest criteria.

Dearing knew that the big buck was ranging somewhere on his land, perhaps on neighboring properties as well. His spirits were lifted when a neighbor reported seeing what may have been the same buck cross a county road.

Then, in early October, Steve Whisenant was driving a tractor to plow food plots and do other land management work on the Dearing ranch when he got two glimpses of the big buck. Although Whisenant always carries his rifle with him while on the tractor and could have shot the buck on at least one occasion, he wanted Dearing to be the one to take the monster, and so held his fire.

The sightings by Whisenant and the neighbor and photographs from three trail cameras indicated that the buck was traveling about a one-mile radius in the vicinity of three blinds on the property.

Soon the pair developed a plan: Dearing would begin a day-by-day pursuit of the big buck, rotating on a daily basis among blinds nos. 1, 2 and 3. Long before daybreak each morning, Whisenant would drop Dearing off at the blind of the day and pick him up later -- proof (if any were needed) that the friendship between the two men is stronger than stone.

Dearing still hunts with a Winchester .270 that he's had for more than 50 years and a pair of Bushnell binoculars nearly a decade older than that. A half-century-old hunting knife that he made from the blade of a crosssaw now belongs to Whisenant, who hunted with Dearing for 50 years on a West Texas ranch near Van Horn where Dearing once bagged a desert mule deer scoring 183 B&C; points, and where old cave in a draw served as the pair's "hunting camp."

From the start of his pursuit of the big Erath County whitetail, Dearing learned that he'd be having company in one of the blinds. An owl had built a nest on the floor inside one of the wooden box blinds and five young flightless owls crowded against one of the walls each time Dearing climbed into the blind.

"You can imagine the stink that was in that blind," he recalled. "I figured that would help cover my scent from the deer, but I poured a bunch of doe-in-estrus scent around between me and the owls just to make sure. Boy, that place stunk!"