It was a cold and crisp November morning, late in the firearms season, when I mounted my stand. The ladder steps were frosted over and the metal slick as I ascended the fifteen feet to my perch. A hard frost had come in overnight, and as I looked up through the tree canopy, the stars were afire against the black backdrop of sky.
The wind was nonexistent and the woods around me eerily quiet, dawn still a half hour away. It was a perfect morning for deer hunting — and not just any deer, but the buck I’d been after for several seasons.
I had logged countless hours scouting the ridge he called home, and the pile of dead trail camera batteries proved just how uncanny he was at slipping past me every step of the way. This year, however, I finally caught him on camera. He was everything I had hoped for and more. My anticipation climbed as the sun twinkled over the ridge and I prepared to start a rattling sequence.
I heard him coming from 200 yards away, snapping branches and breaking through icy puddles below my spot on the hill. My heart was pumping hard — it felt as though it was lodged in my throat. The big buck stepped over the edge of a drop-off, just 75 yards in front of me, into a thick concentration of bramble and deadfall.
All I could see was his head, neck and a short section of his back. I eased my rifle up and put the crosshairs on the neck and waited. He appeared to be looking for the young bucks he heard fighting. Not seeing them, he hung up and wouldn’t come any closer.
It was decision time — risk the heavy cover fouling the shot or hope for another opportunity.
Would I ever get another chance? Would I ever see him in daylight again? A million thoughts raced through my mind in the blink of an eye.
I fired — and missed. The buck turned slowly and made his way back down the ridge before I could cycle the bolt for a follow-up.
Two days later, my hunting partner Harley was feeling under the weather and stayed in camp. His stand was roughly 600 yards north of mine. I hunted my stand until around 10, then got down and still hunted around the bottom of the ridge and back up to Harley’s stand, planning to spend the afternoon there.
I pulled the trail camera card on my way through, figuring I’d check it back at camp that evening. Sure enough, that buck walked right by Harley’s stand at 10 a.m. — striking a pose for the camera. To this day, I’m convinced he was taunting us.
This was the day that buck earned the nickname “Sneaky Pete”.
Over the next two seasons, I kept adjusting my setup, trying to zero in on the best possible ambush spot. No matter what I did, Sneaky Pete was always one step ahead. I’d hear him slip past me before first light one day, then move to the opposite side of the trail the next — only for him to switch sides again that evening.
That buck found a way every day to thread the needle between multiple stands and blinds — both mine and Harley’s. We could hear him, but he was like a ghost.
We told the story of Sneaky Pete at every deer camp at Tucker Ridge, and I challenged my clients to match wits with him. Many hunters tried, but all failed.
Sneaky Pete would skirt past, grunt at a hunter and be gone like the wind. One client, after not seeing a buck for three days, decided to bring his shotgun that morning and take advantage of the abundance of partridge in the area. It was a huge mistake. When he reached the overgrown apple orchard he had been flushing grouse from every morning on his way to the deer stand, who do you think was standing there 50 yards away? Sneaky Pete — high, wide and handsome, and hanging out with a few does.
After three seasons, the legend of Sneaky Pete was firmly cemented in deer hunting lore at Tucker Ridge. Even though I haven’t seen him on camera the past two years, we still talk about him to this day.
Based on his size and age, I am sure he is gone now, and that saddens me. Not because I didn’t capitalize on the one and only opportunity any hunter ever had at taking him, but because I know I’ll never have the chance to dance with him again.
