Hunter gets ‘Bull Shark,’ all 164 4/8 inches of him

Sought-after buck shot in Madison County.

Following what is becoming an all-too-familiar plot of modern deer hunting, Taylor Chastain closed the book on a well-known buck’s story on Jan. 3 at Bozeman Farms in western Madison County.

It was the Bull Shark.

Chastain and the Bozemans had been watching the deer for three seasons. There are numerous trail cam photos dating back to 2010, when it finally achieved mature status, a close call from the 2011 archery season and sheds from both years.

And now Chastain has a trophy 9-point — a massive main-frame 8 with one sticker that points straight forward — that green scores 164 4/8 inches gross, as measured by B&C scorer and Magnolia Records co-developer Rick Dillard.

“There is absolutely no doubt that he is the Bull Shark; we all recognized him,” Chastain said. “He’s one of those bucks that once you’ve seen him you won’t forget him. The rack is very identifiable.”

Here’s why: Take away the 3¼ -inch sticker on the left main beam, and the buck would have been a 161-inch 8-point with few deductions. And it’s less than 18 inches wide.

“The main beams were both long, one 26 1/8 inches and the other about an inch shorter,” Chastain said. “It had great mass, with 6 2/8 inches at the bases and carrying no less than 4 inches to the length of the beam. The G2s is where the points started adding up. One was 13 2/8 and the other one over 12 inches. Both G2s were about 10.”

Oddly enough, the antlers had no role in naming the deer Bull Shark.

“No, it didn’t; not at all,” said Harvey Bozeman, who was hunting nearby. “The first time we started getting photos of him two years ago, he was a heavy buck, and had the look of a bull.

“Then we got some close up photos of him, my nephew Trey looked at its eyes and said they looked big and black, like a shark. So we started calling him the Bull Shark.”

Trophy management is very much in practice at Bozeman Farm. Only mature bucks that have reached their potential are targeted, but with nearly 10,000 acres, the land produces several each season.

“We’d been chasing him pretty hard for the last two years,” Bozeman said. “I got a good chance last year, but couldn’t close the deal. I was bow hunting with Taylor one day and we were about 500 yards apart. I looked up and saw two bucks chasing a doe right toward my stand. I recognized one of them as the Bull Shark and when they ran behind this big cypress tree, I went to full draw.

“I was ready for him to step out, whichever side of the tree he came from, but when the doe and two bucks re-emerged, he wasn’t one of them. I didn’t know if I had just thought it was him and was mistaken, or what? The two bucks were fair bucks, but they were not him so I let off on my bow. I put it down and grabbed a grunt call and hit it.”

Oh no, say it isn’t so!

“Yeah, I looked down and he stepped out from behind that cypress tree and looked right up at me at 25 yards,” Bozeman said. “Wasn’t anything I could do. I couldn’t get the bow up. After he ran off, I grabbed my phone and texted Taylor that I just let the Bull Shark get away.”

One year and a few weeks later, it was Chastain texting Bozeman, and with better news: “The Bull Shark is down.”

“We were hunting in the area where we thought he had to be,” Chastain said. “It was where he had been seen last. I was hunting this one-acre food plot and it was next to a creek that was still high from all this rain. It’s like 15 feet deep (usually just a few feet) and way out of its banks.

“We didn’t figure he would want to cross that creek, unless he had chased a hot doe across it. We had been hunting that area pretty hard for the last three or four trips. We just didn’t see him until Thursday.”

Chastain had been in his shooting house for a couple of hours and was watching about 15 deer, including two young bucks, feeding in the field.

“At about 5 o’clock, I looked up and saw this deer walk into the field,” he said. “It was about 250 yards away and he was coming out of a dark background and I couldn’t make him out that well. Then I saw white and I knew it was a buck so I grabbed my binoculars.”

Chastain glassed the deer, and was hoping it would walk out into the field to join the other deer, and give him a clear view.

“He was lingering and didn’t seem interested in walking out to the other deer,” the hunter said. “He stayed down there in the edge of the field, feeding, and then he looked up and I saw those long tines and how those tips were curving in and I knew it was the Bull Shark. He is that distinctive.”

Chastain swapped his binoculars for his .308, armed with 165-grain Federal Boat-Tails.

“I took the shot at 250 yards and I saw him flinch,” Chastain said. “Then he ran back to the woods and stopped and turned around. I didn’t feel too good about that, because if you double lung a deer they normally run until they fall down. He just stopped and looked back in the field.”

The problem now facing Chastain was that the buck was standing extremely close to the flooded creek. Escape was easy, if the hunter had not made a good shot.

“I didn’t think I had any choice but bolt in another round and take another shot,” Chastain said. “He was a little closer and I put the cross hairs behind the same shoulder and pulled the trigger. The recoil knocked the scope up, and when it came down he was gone.”

Chastain left the shooting house and walked straight to where the buck was standing for the second shot.

“It was such a small opening that I knew I could find right where he was standing and look for blood,” Chastain said. “I didn’t know what was going on, but as soon as I got to the spot I saw a big puddle of blood and could see an obvious blood trail coming from the field where I had first shot him.

“I looked back toward the creek and he was piled up about 15 yards from where I had shot him the second time. If I had not shot again, I think he would have fallen and died right there. I just couldn’t take that chance.”

Chastain was happy with what he found, and not just the antlers.

“The two entry wounds were an inch apart, right behind the front shoulder,” he said. “They were two very good shots.”

After loading the buck and heading back to the camp, Chastain and the Bozemans got the pictures and the sheds and matched them to the Bull Shark.

“It’s amazing how similar he was, each of the last three years,” Chastain said. “Dillard didn’t pull the jawbone but he said it was obvious that the buck would be listed as a 7½-year-old-plus. He didn’t have a lot of teeth left.

“By letting him get that extra year, it looks like he was able to add some length to those long tines and add some mass. But the funny thing is that last year the sticker point, which was a little smaller, was on the other main beam. Another noticeable difference was body size. He only weighed 195 pounds and I know he was around 240 or 250 the last two years. I guess he was just getting old.”

Bozeman said that when the sheds recovered in 2011 and 2012 were held next to the buck, they were incredibly similar.

“You look at the sheds and you look at the pictures, and it’s easy to see,” he said. “Of all the bucks we have tracked to harvest here, this one is the first that I know for a fact was the same deer we were seeing year after year.

“He was the Bull Shark.”

Click here to read about other big bucks killed this season.

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