Days GON By: January 2017

Each month we turn back the clock to see what was being reported in the pages of GON, both 20 and 10 years ago. Here’s a look back at what appeared in GON.

20 Years Ago: January 1997

Buck Attack!: Hunters with land known for big bucks sometimes joke, “I’d be scared to walk through there with doe-in-heat scent on!” Twenty years ago, there was a Macon County hunter who can testify to the power of Tink’s.

Les Cole, of Montezuma, was hunting on quality-managed land in Macon County, land where the rut is intense because of a good buck-to-doe ratio and a high number of older bucks. The rutting activity Les saw that day was just a little too intense—it was directed at him!

“I was sitting on the ground with my back against a dogwood tree,” Les said, “I saw this buck walking at a steady pace through the bottom about 75 yards away. He was a good buck, but I decided not to shoot him. When he got directly downwind of me, he stopped and turned and started coming toward me with his nose on the ground. I had some Tink’s 69 on my boots, and I’m sure that’s why he turned.”

Les sat and watched as the buck steadily came closer, and closer, and closer!

“He literally didn’t stop until he was at my feet—just 2 feet away.”

At that point, Les changed his mind and decided to shoot the buck, which was so close he figured he could shoot “from the hip.” Les fired, but the bullet only grazed the buck’s neck.

“It definitely startled him, but he only jumped back about 3 feet. His hair stood up on his back, and he bowed up, like a dog when it’s being aggressive. Then he put his head down and ran at me. He was stretched out and coming full speed.”

As Les fired again, he was backpedaling.

“I tore that dogwood up trying to get behind it.”

The 9-pointer weighed almost 200 pounds and was later aged at 3 1/2 years old.

“I figure he was thinking more about mating then attacking,” said Les.

Blake Smith’s 159 4/8-inch Pulaski County buck was the best deer taken from the 2006-07 deer season.

10 Years Ago: January 2007

Rabbideer!: When Joey Sayer saw a strange animal in the road near his home in Yatesville, he thought it was a fawn at first. He went to move it out of the road, and upon closer inspection, the 1 1/2-foot-high animal looked a lot like a genetic cross between a rabbit and a deer, a “rabbideer,” Joey called it.

Actually, the animal is a Patagonian cavy, escaped from a Yatesville man who had five of them he had planned to sell at his pet store. But Joey did not discover the animal’s real identity until his son Jake captured it, and they contacted local wildlife officials.

This isn’t a “rabbideer,” but it’s a Patagonian cavy. Jake Sayer, 9, finally was able to catch the strange critter, which was owned by a man in Yatesville.

After more than two hours of 10 to 12 neighbors either spectating or trying to catch the cavy with a net, Jake, 9­—who apparently is pretty quick since cavies have been clocked at 18 mph—finally nabbed the world’s second-largest rodent bare-handed more than a mile from the original sighting.

The animal was taken to a neighbor’s house, where it was kept indoors before being returned to its rightful owner.