The Flip-A-Coin Buck

By an unusual twist of fate, the author, Duncan Dobie (left) was hunting with a Marlin .30-30 lever-action while his hunting partner Charlie Breithaupt (right) had a Winchester .30-30 lever-action rifle. When they saw this enormous buck following a doe, they both fired at the same time, but only one bullet struck home. The unforgettable hunt took place in November 1970 in Henry County.

In those days we were green as grass and very naive as to the ways of big bucks, but what we lacked in experience we more than made up for in determination and the sheer love of hunting. The rolling farm property we were hunting 50 miles south of Atlanta was prime for seeing a trophy whitetail. Deer season had just opened several years earlier and hunting pressure was light. This coupled with the fact that Henry County had excellent genetics from previous stockings of Wisconsin deer in nearby counties provided lots of hefty mature bucks weighing more than 250 pounds that roamed the mixed open and wooded countryside. We were hunting in mid-November during the peak of the rut and that didn’t hurt matters any either. Stand hunting that morning had been quiet and uneventful for our small group of four. When someone suggested that we try a late-morning deer drive through a several-hundred-yard-long patch of woods that dog-legged around a large, terraced pasture, it sounded like a good way to generate some venison.

It was a crisp fall Saturday afternoon in November 1970. I was hunting with several friends on a picturesque farm known as the old Rawls place. Typical of central Georgia, the farm had a combination of gently rolling mixed pine and hardwood hills and open, terraced cattle pastures. My companions were teachers at the Westminster School in Atlanta, a well-known and highly regarded private school. Charlie Breithaupt was the high-school principal.

Jim Henderson, the landowner, had been sending his children to Westminster for the past few years and had graciously invited Charlie and several other teachers to hunt on his land. Leon Scott, a close friend and the best hunting mentor I ever had, had been my football coach in the eighth grade when I attended Briarcliff High School in DeKalb County. Leon had later taken a position at Westminster teaching English and Literature. If you want to know what kind of teacher he was, suffice it to say that classic books like William Faulkner’s Big Woods and Robert Ruark’s The Old Man and the Boy were literary staples in his classroom. When Leon left Briarcliff for greener pastures, everyone was sorry to see him go, but we all knew it was a big move up for him. Both Charlie and Leon were the type of men who were true assets to the Westminster teaching staff, and it was my good fortune to be hunting with them now in Henry County.

Leon was hobbling around on crutches as the result of a recent knee surgery. You can’t keep a serious deer hunter out of the woods, though, especially during the peak of the rut in November. He was so determined to hunt that day he likely would have crawled to his stand if necessary. Our plans for the deer drive were simple. Charlie and I would make a push through the section of woods from one end to the other, while Leon, the “invalid” of the group, and a fourth hunter and friend of Leon’s, would take stands at the opposite end of the woods and hope we would send a good buck in their direction. Leon and his friend drove around to the far end of the woods in a pickup so that he wouldn’t have to go far to reach his designated position.

After a brief time-out for a snack, the four of us headed out in different directions. In order to get to the edge of the woods where we planned to begin our drive, Charlie and I had to walk around a long, curving stretch of terraced pasture that sloped uphill to the tree line. The weather was unusually warm that day, but we all felt a slight chill in the air that told us much cooler temperatures were coming. It was about a 10-minute walk to reach the far end of the woodlot. We were about 60 or 70 yards from the tree line and we had just topped the last terrace and were walking side-by-side, when suddenly, we were greeted with a sight that neither of us would ever forget. A large doe, followed closely by an enormous buck with a huge rack, appeared out of nowhere, trotting casually across the pasture from right to left paralleling the woods line about 30 yards away.

They saw us at the same time we saw them. In an instant they were bounding toward the safety of the woods, the big buck following in the doe’s footsteps. For a split-second Charlie and I were dumbstruck, but then sheer instinct took over. Just as the buck was about to make his final bound into the safety of the brush on the edge of the pasture where he would be gone forever, what sounded like a single shot rang out. At least, Leon and his friend later swore it sounded like a single shot. In truth, Charlie and I raised our guns and fired off a snapshot at the exact same instant. Typical of the guns used in those days, Charlie was wielding an iron-sighted Model 94 Winchester .30-30 lever-action carbine. By coincidence, I was hunting with an iron-sighted Marlin .30-30 lever-action. At the shots, the two deer disappeared into the woods.

For the next 30 seconds all was quiet. Charlie and I stood frozen in our tracks, listening intently. Then just as those negative doubts that seem to plague every hunter were beginning to rear their ugly head, we heard a muffled grunt.

“He’s down!” Charlie said excitedly.

We quickly rushed into the woods, ready to shoot again if necessary. A few yards inside the tree line, lying in a dense patch of honeysuckle, lay the most magnificent whitetail buck either of us had ever seen that close up. As we cautiously approached, the big buck moved his head slightly and made one final grunt. Then his antlers came to rest on the ground for good.

After some of the initial shock began to wear off, we examined the massive whitetail from head to toe. He was an exceptional 150-class, heavy-beamed 10-pointer. His body size was immense—probably around 260 to 270 pounds. His thickly swollen neck made him appear to be the size of a small steer. Our careful examination revealed a single entry hole from a single bullet high on the buck’s left shoulder in the spinal area. Having broken the buck’s back, the bullet had not exited.

A sobering look suddenly appeared on both of our faces. One of us had connected, but which one? How were we going to determine who had fired the fatal shot? The shot had been an excellent piece of marksmanship, and both of us felt very confident about having made it, but neither one of us wanted to make a big issue over it. While we were talking, we saw the truck with Leon and his friend driving across the pasture. Since they had heard what sounded like a single shot, they correctly assumed a buck was down, and they had come around to investigate. We waved to the truck and within a few minutes all four of us were gloating over one of the finest bucks any of us had ever seen.

You can’t keep a good man out of the woods. Leon Scott, on crutches, despite having had recent knee surgery, was determined to be in the woods that day. He and Charlie Breithaupt hold up the amazing “flip-a-coin-buck” during the field-dressing procedure. At the time, no one knew whose bullet had downed the buck. Both Leon and Charlie were cherished mentors to the author and remain cherished longtime friends to this day.

The discussion about who had fired the shot continued as the field-dressing chore got underway. Finally, we decided there was only one thing to do. We would flip a coin. The winner would get the antlers and hide for mounting, and Charlie and I would split the meat equally. (Actually everyone would share in the meat). With great ceremony, Leon flipped a coin. Charlie won the coin toss. Naturally I was sick at heart, but I tried to be a good sport. Upon returning to Atlanta that night well after dark, we stopped by the Westminster School gymnasium where we attempted to weigh the huge buck on some athletic scales. With part of his head still touching the ground, he registered 220 pounds on those scales (field-dressed). We then drove over to Leon’s house a short distance away where we hung the big buck by his back legs in the basement. After carefully taking off the head and cape, we skinned-out the body and started butchering the meat.

About halfway through the process, as we were cutting down the deer’s backbone with a saw, a mushroomed, copper-jacketed slug plopped out and fell to the floor.

“Here’s a souvenir for somebody,” Leon said, picking up what remained of the bullet.

He examined it very carefully.

“Hmmm, you can see the grooves from the rifle barrel in the copper jacket…”

For a moment or two, none of us thought much about it. But then it seemed to hit everyone at once. It was common knowledge that the barrel of a Winchester Model 94 had six grooves. But the highly publicized Marlin “Micro-groove” contained 12 grooves in the barrel. We quickly examined the jacket again and counted 12 grooves, indicating the fateful bullet had been fired from my Marlin!

In more than 50 years of deer hunting, I’ve been on a lot of memorable hunts. I’ve shared campfires with some remarkable men. I’ve also been around a handful I’d prefer to forget. But that night I witnessed one of the greatest acts of sportsmanship a young man in my position could ever experience. Charlie immediately made it clear to me that the entire deer was mine. He had won the coin toss fair and square, and now he was freely giving up the buck of a lifetime.

“This is your buck,” he said. “It was your good shot that brought him down. Get him mounted, and whenever you admire him hanging on the wall, always remember what happened today!”

Remember? How could I ever forget one of the greatest deer hunting adventures of my life? Not only was Charlie Breithaupt the kind of “principled” man and hunter that you want to share a deer camp with, he had also found his true calling in life as a highly respected and much-revered teacher and “principle” of one of Atlanta’s finest private schools.

Over the years, both Charlie and Leon left a lasting impression on countless students by the positive examples they set. But that shouldn’t come as any real surprise to anyone who knows these men. After all, they are both hopelessly addicted whitetail hunters, and whitetail hunters are the finest people on earth.

The author poses with his buck of a lifetime taken in Henry County in 1970 that he almost lost in a coin toss.

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