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No, I'm not talking about the big ape. This appropriately named whitetail (he is a monster) resides at the Wallahachie. The BuckVentures boys tend to give the deer they hunt names. It sort of helps them carry on the legacy of the whitetail. In case you're not familiar with the Wallahachie, it's the BuckVentures' hunting ground where Jeff Danker downed a huge deer (176") last season with his Knight muzzleloader. (This particular deer's name was Ali because of his fighting skills.)

Jeff was able to get a lot of early season footage of King Kong in the summer of 2006. He even got footage of King Kong and Ali in the same crop field. Unfortunately, Jeff only managed to get one trail camera

picture, but it was a dandy (see intro pic). Just by looking at the footage and the lone trail camera picture, Jeff estimated the monarch to be at least 200+ inches.

The BuckVentures team had a few encounters with King Kong during the 2006 hunting season, but he was always able to stay one step ahead. Then, like most smart bucks do, King Kong simply vanished. During a late season hunt, Jeff got another glimpse of King Kong, but the monster slipped away unscathed once again.

February rolled around and so did shed hunting season. Jeff, Dan Evans and I made a trip to the Wallahachie to try and find King Kong's sheds. We found over 40 sheds that weekend, but we were missing the sheds we so coveted. Dan even found the 25-inch broken double main beam that Ali broke while, you guessed it, fighting. Talk about a needle in a haystack!

We were down to the last few hours of our last day, and, after searching a lot of ground, we realized we had yet to look in the area where Jeff had last seen King Kong. So we decided to make one last-ditch effort in that vicinity. Let me just say, it was an amazing feeling when I stumbled upon the shed antlers of King Kong's left side. Once I picked up the shed and held it in my hand, there was no doubt of who it belonged to. The hooked G-2 gave it away ... oh, and the mass too! I love to shed hunt, and that one antler was the biggest shed I had ever found. But, most importantly, I was now a part of King Kong's legacy.

After I located Jeff and Dan, we all blanketed the area where I found the shed. We had to find the right side before dark. Ten minutes later, I heard Jeff yell, "Found it!" We compared the antlers with the trail camera picture. King Kong had broken off a lot of the trash on his antlers, but we still thought he would score in the high 170s. Finally, we looked closely at the trail camera picture, and since he was looking straight at us, we really got close in our final estimation. Jeff scored the brute at 180, then he added the estimated 19 inches that he had broken off. So the final estimation was a whopping 199 inches! What an incredible whitetail!

There's no telling how big his antlers will grow next season, without a doubt, he will top 200 inches. I do know one thing for sure: King Kong will be on the BuckVentures' Most Wanted list this coming season. Good luck to all who will have the privilege to hunt King Kong next season. If the season passes without the harvest of this great whitetail, I hope I'm there to stumble upon his sheds once again. Long live King Kong ... his legend, that is.