The tone of my wife’s voice on the other end of the line said it all. “ When are you coming home?” and I want you to tell me the truth” she asked with a quiver in her voice. I paused before replying back to her, because I knew she wouldn’t like my answer. Putting my response off long enough I gritted my teeth and simply said, “not sure”. Well as you might imagine this is not what she wanted to hear and I knew I owed her a better answer but I was just being honest.

It was mid December and I was in South Texas along with Bill Jordan trying to capture enough footage to produce a Realtree Outdoors television show segment and even though we had been hunting hard for the last seven days we had just begun to see a drastic difference in the deer movement. Part of this no doubt was brought on by a change in the weather conditions. The temperature had dropped a good twenty degrees, which was what we were needing to trigger the much-anticipated rut. With money already on the line that was set forth for a south Texas deer show, there was no way we could turn back now. So far we had not gotten enough footage to amount to squat, and we knew that it was still a gamble to stay past our departure date because there is never a guarantee when you were hunting mature whitetail bucks. But we had to go with the odds, and the odds were that with three realtree cameras rolling, a sudden change in the weather for the good, and a biological fact that deer that time of year in the area we were hunting should be in love, we were bound to get footage of at least one whopper buck making a fatal mistake. As I explained all of this to my wife, she pretended to understand, but I really knew deep down she questioned what drove men to the psychological condition to stay in camp with a bunch of other men in rustic conditions. Get up two hours before daylight, drink a cup of coffee, eat a piece of stale toast, and sit in a blind most of the day just in hopes to bag a deer.

Questions like this one, even though I hate to admit it, have often invaded my thoughts as well, but it seems there is a different engine that drives us whitetail hunters. The visions of massive, long tined antlers flood the minds of those who hunt deer. These dreams can not only be uplifting but frustrating as well to those of us whose dreams have yet to come true. The dream buck floats through every whitail enthusiast head. These illusions are what get us out of bed two to three hours before daylight rain or shine, to sit motionless on our blinds scanning the woodlines and fields. They make our heart skip a beat when we hear the crunch of leaves, a snap of a branch or the curious bark of a squirrel. These thoughts have possessed some men to totally lose focus on their priorities and even drive some people insane enough to cost them their marriage, job, are in some cases a friendship. To those who don’t hunt, they simply laugh and make fun of this odd behavior.

One thing that I have found contagious with this condition is that as soon as a hunter does get lucky enough to bag his dream buck another one will take his place in his thoughts only just a little wider, taller, and heavier with a few more non-typical tines within moments of success. This is disease is wide spread and is not limited to just one area in North America. People from all walks of life suffer, but yet find the plague therapeutic. Anyone who has a passion for the outdoors is a potential victim, and it is passed down to a lot of us by our fathers. There is no known cure, and no research is even being done to come up with a remedy. No matter how many days spent in the field hunting and pursuing the whitetail hunters itch is never scratched. So those of us who are infected will have to live in this state of mind until we pass.

This is the reason we had to stay in Texas and play the odds in hopes to get our dream buck. Sure walking away and going home was not going to hurt anyone, but we were no different than the compulsive gambler trying to leave the poker table. We were brain washed and the only thing that controlled our mind was the dream buck. We stayed and kept chasing after this illusional ghost.

So stay we did and as luck would have it, we were successful in our quest. We shot two bucks and scraped up enough footage to make a quality television show. We were on top of the world after our gamble proved to pay off. Strangely however, was that as soon as all the equipment had been packed up and we were on our way to the airport to go home, reality hit. The obsession once again took control, and that majestic, magical animal took control of our thoughts. For some of us we will never have an answer to why it walks constantly through our heads or why it controls our desires. Oh yes, it is certainly odd and almost humorous, but to the whitetail hunter it is so real. The dream buck, the one that will never be taken. It is truly an unexplainable obsession, but one that I’m proud of because it makes me a hunter.