The two finally made it to their hotspot at midmorning -- at which point they found out that it wasn't exactly a secret. "Trucks were everywhere," Luke said. "Not good. We had to move, and we didn't have a backup plan. We had to find something, and half of the first day of a two-day hunt was already gone.

"We scouted for four hours and finally found a spot with some fresh scrapes, but no impressive rubs. It was the best we had, so we set up and hunted there. We hunted to dark and didn't see a thing."

On the second day of the hunt, the two hunters returned to the woods with little expectation of success and a whole lot of dejection. They decided to split up to see what they could find.

"I started walking, easing through the woods," Luke said, "and at one spot I jumped three does. Deer were there, and I didn't have anything else to go on, so I decided to settle in for what I thought would be another long and fruitless day.

"But 20 minutes later, I looked up and saw six does walk up and start feeding on my right. I was watching them, and in a few minutes they began getting nervous, and then they ran off. I thought they had winded me or something."

That "something" turned out to be exactly what Luke had dreamed of when he decided to register for the primitive-weapon hunt at Yazoo: A big buck was headed his way.

"He was walking at a very fast pace toward where the does had been," the hunter recalled. "He kept coming, and I got ready, found an opening and squeezed the trigger."

When the huge cloud of black-powder smoke cleared, Luke saw the body of the big buck motionless on the ground. "I couldn't believe it," he said. "Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good. It turned out to be a huge 9-point with a 19 3/4-inch inside spread, 5-inch bases and main beams of 23 1/2 and 24 inches" -- another Yazoo giant!

Combine the two previous stories and you get the tale of Carl Taylor, and a third and trophy from the 2006-07 Yazoo season. His is a story of patience and then luck, but the hunter acknowledged, it has an ending that neither he nor, indeed, anybody would ever want.

If Taylor's name sounds familiar, you clearly know Mississippi bowhunting history. During the 2004-05 season, on the opening day of the archery season, Taylor established the current state archery record for typical deer with a 165 5/8-inch buck taken on private land. And when he backed that deer up with another P&Y class deer last year at Yazoo, he solidified his rank among the best archery hunters in Mississippi.

After two weeks without success at Yazoo, Taylor realized that he faced a major obstacle in his search for a refuge trophy: crowded woods. "I wasn't seeing anything but other hunters, so I figured I'd better get away from the crowd," he said. "So the morning of Oct. 14, I just took my climbing stand and moved to a new area of the refuge one morning in the dark."

The archer was in the dark -- both literally and figuratively. Before dawn, using only a flashlight, he moved into the area, which was so new to him that he had no clue as to what he'd find.

"I just knew there weren't nearly as many other hunters," he stated. "I didn't see any other vehicles, and I didn't see any people either."

When the sun came up, Taylor got his first look at his new location. It didn't look good -- but it didn't look bad, either, and at 7 a.m., he learned that deer were in the area. "I looked up and saw a deer about 40 yards to my left," he said. "I couldn't tell what it was at first until it bobbed its head; that's when I knew it was a buck. I kept watching -- and then I knew he was a shooter."

We're not talking about one of the inferior qualifying bucks, either; it was a big-bodied, heavy-antlered buck walking toward him. "Once I knew he was a shooter, I got ready," Taylor said. "He started moving right toward me. When he was 15 yards away, he stopped, but he was right behind a tree -- a big tree. I couldn't see any part of him, so I knew he couldn't see me either. I drew my bow. I aimed dead at the tree, so no matter where he reappeared, I was ready." That was the smart move, and the reason that he was able to make the shot.

"The buck apparently had winded me," Taylor said, "because when he stepped out from the tree, he had turned and was leaving the same way he had come. Because I had drawn, I was able to shoot before he started running -- and I sort of spined him. It wasn't a great shot, turns out."

Which leads us to the part of the story that Taylor hates to tell.