I knew that the big buck lived in the area because I had found his tracks on more than one occasion in the white sand that lay nearby on a remote trail. From the elevated shooting box I could see a few acres of year-old cutover, an edge where a broom sage patch met the woods and a long lane through the woods that had been a road perhaps a century ago.

    Darkness moved in, as usual much quicker than I wanted, and visibility waned by the minute. I sat as still as Lincoln on the face of Mt. Rushmore. Buck hunters know that the last shreds of light are their best chance to spot a trophy that has just left his bed to feed and breed.

    My own late-in-the-day rule moved steadily across the screen of my mind, repeating itself like the musical notes from an organ grinder. “Each additional minute you wait at dusk holds a higher possibility of seeing a buck than the minute just passed.”

    Suddenly a black shadow stepped from the cover on the right side of the woods lane. The buck took two quick steps to the center of the narrow corridor and turned away from me as I raised my rifle as quickly as I could. By the time the butt plate reached my shoulder, I glimpsed through misty darkness extensive main beams sweeping far outward and upward from the buck’s head; astonishingly long and tall proportionately for the buck’s body, which lay dwarfed between them like a lower case o between parenthesis marks.

    In milliseconds the crosshairs of my scope fell on the image, their intersection being lost in the blackness of the bucks body. But in precisely the same instant, quicker than a brain signal could reach my trigger finger, the buck turned left and stepped toward the woods. In the split second it took to move the crosshairs with the buck, he had taken the two steps into the woods and was gone. Gone without having made a single sound.

    The silence in my ears brought a brief doubt that he was ever there at all. But my eyes and a bright scope assured me that yes, I had seen the boss buck of the woods. And his aversion to hesitate in openings had cost me a chance to bag him.

    In 35 seconds, I can read the two short paragraphs above that describe the moments that I saw him. The real time was about six seconds. The buck had crossed the narrow lane without ever stopping,  and so quickly that I never reacted with a sharp whistle to stop him.

    This experience happened a dozen years ago, and yet the image of that giant whitetail is still crystal clear in my mind. The glimpse he gave me mirrors the image registered by a camera with only a millisecond of shutter opening. But the image is unmistakable; and unforgettable.

    The intent here, dismissing my whining, is to applaud the cunning of trophy bucks, to reassure trophy hunters that the “almost mine” episode happens to all of us and ultimately to hold up the mature whitetail buck as one of hunting’s finest trophies.

    My brother suggested that the really big ones often give us only brief peeks at themselves or simply leave signs that they exist; the “Peek Theory” as it were. Without a lot of years afield, a hunter may never get even that one glimpse. To continue pursuing a super buck, he or she may have to rely on the stories of the few monster bucks that are brought in by both skilled and lucky hunters, and the glimpses others have been given. And these days, throw in the use of good trail cameras.

    An antler tip showing two feet above the eye of a deer screened behind a thick tangle of vines and brush; a body three times the size of a leading doe seen 500 yards down the pipe line; a glint of reflected moonlight on an arm-length antler just as shooting time expires. These are parts of the substance of trophy whitetail hunting.

    Other more subtle parts are waist high antler rubs on arm size trees; scrapes the size of bath tubs; a track in the mud that your hand barely covers. More teasing clues that he is there; more frustration that you have never seen him.

    The Peek Theory; steadily growing from the theoretical to the cold, hard truth.