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The Pennyrile Buck

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Is this the largest non-typical ever taken on public land?
By Lee McClellan









Dan Miller dropped to his knees once he saw the 21-point buck that he’d just shot during a state quota hunt at Pennyrile Wildlife Management Area. “Do you realize what you’ve done?” his son-in-law asked.
“Well,” Miller replied, “I have a big buck.”
“No,” his son-in-law responded. “You have a Boone and Crockett buck.”
Miller, a teacher at an Amish school in Horse Cave, took the non-typical monster last November with a 70-yard shot from a 7mm Savage Model 110. The deer scored 246 3/8 in the Boone and Crockett Club system. David Yancy, senior deer biologist for the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources, said he’s not aware of a bigger non-typical buck taken on public hunting land in Kentucky.
Miller didn’t get a chance to do any scouting before the hunt, but his cousin put him in a good spot – a two-mile hike from the road.
He set up in a hilly area with plenty of white oak trees. “I didn’t see a thing all morning, but I stayed in the woods,” Miller said. “I thought I didn’t have a lot of daylight time left. He just appeared out of nowhere. I feel he just got up from where he was laying on that hillside. I was watching that hillside constantly. He snuck in.”
The white oak trees were the key. “I saw the deer slowly walking and he was facing away from me,” Miller said. “He had his head down and was eating acorns. He was real calm. He didn’t move two steps. He didn’t know anything was going on.”
The oblivious buck turned and gave Miller a good shot. “He was right there and I let him have it, but he disappeared,” he said. The buck wandered about 200 yards.




Dan Miller walked two miles through the woods for a shot at this buck. It ranks second on the state's list of non-typical deer killed by a hunter.
Photo courtesy of Martin Meredith

“When I got up on him, he was a lot bigger than I thought,” Miller continued. “I saw that big drop tine and I got excited. I lost it. I starting counting tines and I couldn’t remember how many he had.”
Hunters frequently stopped by Miller’s house to see the huge buck until he sent it to the taxidermist. “I never realized,” Miller said, “how much excitement a big deer can cause.”