Ervin Vance poses his trophy non-typical 29-point, which scores a whopping 218 2/8 Boone and Crockett points. Photo by Bill Cooper.

Randy Vance and his family reside in the town of Beaver, approximately 15 miles north of Pine Mountain. It’s hardly a stone’s throw from Owen County, which is situated north of Lexington in an area of the state known as the Hills of the Bluegrass.

“Regardless of the route taken, it’s nearly a four-hour trip,” Vance said. Despite the distance, he’s been hunting deer there for over 20 years.

“I first began hunting there on a farm owned by my dad. He eventually sold the property. But by then, we had become acquainted with a number of other landowners and over the years, have continued to hunt in the county.”

It should be pointed out many other hunters from the eastern mountains also travel to western areas of the state annually to hunt deer. Even during the 1990s, deer seasons in the counties around Beaver were limited to only a few days of buck-only hunting. Today, the deer population remains in the growth and expansion phase. Gun seasons are short, and antlerless are deer protected, except during bow and other special seasons.

“Regardless of the particular site, we’ve never had a problem seeing deer in Owen County. But like in most other locations, finding a really big buck is a pretty tough assignment.

“Hopefully to improve this situation, a few years ago we began passing up smaller bucks. I ended up hunting for a couple of seasons without taking an antlered deer.”

Last fall, in mid-October, Randy took his youngest son, Andrew, to the Owen County farm for the state’s special “Youth Only” deer-hunting weekend. Although a number of deer were seen overall, the trip provided little encouragement for the upcoming November gun season.

“On that trip, I walked over the entire farm and never found the first buck rub,” Vance said.

“The following weekend, I returned for the early muzzleloader season. There was little change, except that I did manage to find buck rubs on two small saplings. To say the least, I was a little disappointed.”

On Friday morning, prior to opening weekend of gun season, Randy, his 21-year-old son Ervin, and two hunting companions made the drive to Owen County.

They devoted to the afternoon to scouting and positioning of stands.

“I couldn’t believe the amount of buck sign we found that afternoon! It was almost like going to a different farm. We walked down one woods road for a short distance and counted eight scrapes.

“In one area of extremely thick brush, Ervin found freshly rubbed trees and scrapes as big as a car hood. Nearby, several small trees had been completely broken over.”

On opening morning, Randy and Ervin selected stand locations in an area of the farm they were most familiar with. But they observed little deer activity, with Randy spotting only one small buck.

“Considering all the buck sign we found the previous day, it seemed pretty obvious that we needed to try another location,” Randy Vance said.

“That afternoon, we moved to the other end of the farm and did some additional scouting in a few of the areas we checked on Friday. With the rut apparently in full swing, we felt pretty good about our situation for the following morning.”

The hunt area included a timbered hilltop that sloped gradually downward to pasture-covered bottomlands. At one time, the lower portion of the slope between the pasture and the timber had also been cleared. But several years before, the actual pasture was fenced in, preventing cattle from utilizing the adjacent open land.