Angus Cachot spent more than 100 hours in his Yazoo NWR stand last season. He was waiting for this bruiser buck. Photo by Robert H. Cleveland Jr.

Even after 100 hours of sitting in the same stand in the same tree without seeing a single deer during the 2006-07 season, Angus Cachot knew not to give up -- not when that tree was in Yazoo National Wildlife Refuge. And not when he knew the buck of a lifetime either lived nearby or, at the very least, was an infrequent visitor.

"Thing about Yazoo is, when you get on one of its big bucks, and you have a chance, you can't give up on him," offered the archer, who makes the Delta his winter weekend home each deer season. "And I'd seen him. I knew he was living nearby. All I wanted to do was see him again, up close, during the season. I was going to be patient."

The south Mississippi bowhunter's determination was fueled by visions of the heavy-headed buck that he'd crossed paths with one afternoon during preseason scouting. "Only time I saw him," he said, "I caught a glimpse of him during the early fall, and hadn't seen him since. But I knew he was using the area: I found a lot of his signs -- big rubs and scrapes -- so I felt like he was still coming through.

"Thing is, I knew he was nocturnal. You see a mature buck like that, and he didn't get old and escape being killed that long by moving around during the daylight -- not when hunters are using the refuge. But I knew there was a chance that he might make a mistake; I also knew that he wouldn't make more than one or two -- and neither could I. That meant I had to spend every hour I could in that stand waiting."

The history of Yazoo NWR, part of the Theodore Roosevelt National Wildlife Complex in the Mississippi Delta, was also a factor in Cachot's determination. Although the quality of Yazoo's deer herd has diminished somewhat over the past decade, it remains the state's No. 1 public hunting area for high-end bucks. Extend the view over the past quarter-century, and Yazoo NWR shows itself to be one of the South's best public hunting areas.

"We've seen a decrease in the quantity and quality of our bucks over the past 12 years," admitted Yazoo biologist David Linden. "We still have a lot of great bucks that do come through each year, but as a whole, the quality is down."

Linden had absolutely no doubt as to why quality's fallen off. "It's the state's 4-point rule," he said, "which is the worst management tool you can have for quality bucks. We are by law forced to adhere to state regulations, but I will say this: We push it to the very limits in what we allow hunters to take.

"What the 4-point rule does is take hunting pressure off the young inferior bucks you'd want to remove from the herd and puts more pressure and greater harvest on your superior young bucks. That takes a toll, and will impact the quality of bucks when they mature, because you have eliminated the bucks with the best potential before they reach maturity and reach their full potential."

In short, hunters are harvesting 1 1/2-year-old bucks that have developed 4 points quickly, while passing over older bucks that have slow-growing racks.

As just noted, Yazoo officials are limited as to what they can do to offset the negative aspects of the 4-point rule. "Last season, and it may change this year, we required hunters to get a qualifying buck in our first season before we would allow them to hunt during our January hunt," Linden said. "We required them to take either a 1 1/2-year-old buck with 5 points or less or a 2 1/2-year-old or older with 7 points or less. That doesn't mean they couldn't take a bigger buck, but they had to take a qualifier to take part in our January archery hunt."

During the 2006-07 season, hunters took a total of 158 deer, 95 of which were bucks. Of that total, 36 were 8-pointers or better and 17 had inside spreads of at least 18 inches.

"Quality-wise, it was a little better than recent years," Linden observed, "but quantity-wise our numbers were down. We may have to do something different in 2007-08 to get our numbers up, especially does. But, we did have 28 qualifying deer taken to allow January hunting."

One of those was a 2 1/2-year-old 6-point taken by Cachot, which allowed him to hunt into January. And good thing, too -- because after taking that inferior buck on Oct. 13, the deerslayer from Wiggins moved to his primary area, where he had seen the big buck, and began his vigil.

The second half of October and all of November passed. Cachot sat in his tree and never saw a deer -- not a buck, not a doe nor a yearling. "Not a single one," he said.

December came, and with it, the onset of the rut. Cachot knew that if the big buck was going to err, it would be when its hormone level was up and its guard down. But December passed, and the archer, who had yet to be graced by a single deer visit, could only hope that the new year would bring him a change in luck.

And it did.