Wally Jayne's Cayuga County 12-pointer was just shy of minimum Boone and Crockett standards with a net typical score of 164 5/8 inches. Photo courtesy of Wally Jayne

Most record-book whitetail bucks were slain by hunters who had never seen the animal before. That makes perfect sense, especially in the thickly forested Northeast because bucks with headgear big enough to merit recognition by the Boone and Crockett Club, the Pope and Young Club, the Northeast Big Buck Club and other trophy-tracking organizations usually get that way by living in the shadows.

The Wally Jayne buck, taken last November on a two-century-old family homestead in Cayuga County, is a remarkable exception to the rule. The 12-pointer, whose sweeping antlers fell about two finger lengths shy of minimum Boone and Crockett standards with a net typical score of 164 5/8 inches, was an old acquaintance of the hunter who bagged it.

Jayne is a retired dairy farmer who lives in the hamlet of Kelloggsville, between Skaneateles and Owasco lakes. One summer evening in 2002, he spotted a huge whitetail feeding in an alfalfa field near his home. Over the next three years, he and his neighbors saw the wide-racked buck on numerous occasions. Jayne began carrying a camera, and took many long-range snapshots of the deer -- a dozen of them in 2004 alone.

Although the handsome whitetail was unusually bold in the summer, it had a habit of vanishing during hunting season. Jayne said many hunters were aware of the animal, but none had seen it after September.

"I assumed the deer was pretty much unhuntable," he said.

So it seemed until last Nov. 28, when the big buck suddenly broke through a hedgerow and stopped broadside about 60 yards from the muzzle of Jayne's shotgun.

THE SAGA BEGINS
Jayne had high hopes as the 2004 deer season began.

Mature whitetails were increasingly common in the Kelloggsville area, in part because Jayne and several of his neighbors practiced quality deer management principles and routinely filled their doe permits while passing on shots at yearling bucks.

On Nov. 26, the first Friday of the Southern Zone regular firearms season, Jayne had put his deer management permit tag on a nice doe.

Two days later, Jayne was riding home on an all-terrain vehicle, gun empty, after a fruitless afternoon hunt. He kept one eye on the gently sloping hills as he drove along.

"I was on my way back to the farm house when I looked out at the corn field and saw this nice buck," he recalled. "I got off the 4-wheeler, didn't even turn the engine off, and re-loaded my shotgun."

Jayne started walking up a hedgerow that bordered the corn field and screened him from the buck's view. He could hear his son-in-law, Derek Coningsby, driving a tractor at the far end of the corn.

"I imagine the tractor noise might have distracted the deer just a bit," Jayne said.

He had gone less than halfway up the hedgerow when the buck suddenly broke through the brush and ambled across the same hay field Jayne was standing in.

"He stopped about 60 yards away, and that was all I needed," the hunter said. "I put my scope cross hairs behind his shoulder and fired. He started running across the field, and just when he got near an old pasture, he staggered."

Jayne fired a second shot into the deer's neck, but realized afterward that the coup de grâce wasn't really necessary.

Instead of following the deer immediately, Jayne calmly walked back to his ATV, which was still idling.

"By this time it was starting to get dark, so I turned on the headlights and drove back across the field to where I'd last seen the deer," he said. "When I came up to it, I realized that this was the same buck I'd been watching all year."

Admiring the deer's nearly 30-inch rack, the lucky hunter could scarcely believe he had finally killed the legendary Kelloggsville Buck.

Or had he?

At that point, Jayne reached for his walkie-talkie and called Coningsby and his nephews, Jeff and Jack Jayne and Sean Murphy.

"I told them I'd shot the big one, but they thought I said I was having 'the big one,' " Jayne said. "In other words, a heart attack! There were some worried looks on their faces when they showed up."