i hunt in east tennessee in johnson county and around south holston lake. Bobcat, I' d say your buddy was hunting on cherokee nation forest. There are so many acres that it would be easy to get away from all the other hunters. Sometimes its easy to get permission to hunt on private land and sometimes its not. Alot of it here is leased out but if u can find some that isn' t then they usually let you hunt (alot of the farmers hate em cause there ruining there crop). As far as any big deer goes, well, there here but not in great numbers. I talked to a guy that hunts on Meades (there a construction company that also has large tracts of woods and corn fields) and he thinks that his buddy might have the new tn state record. He said it grossed 190 something.