The Hunt For Charlie

Lee Ellis (left) and Drew Carroll with the Cobb County giant. Lee’s 12-pointer netted 163 2/8, and Drew got the hunt on video.

Lee Ellis is no stranger to big deer, so when he got a trail-cam pic in 2012 of a 3-year-old buck that would easily clear 145, he got excited. Even then, the deer had tremendous brow tines, and thus the name Charlie Brows—a take-off of Charlie Brown—was given to this buck. 

Little did Lee know that the chase for Charlie would last three years. In 2013, Charlie grew a very impressive 170-plus-inch rack and had moved more than 7 miles from his 2012 home range. Lee was studying abroad until December that fall and couldn’t hunt Charlie during the buck’s most vulnerable times. When Lee got back home, there were pics waiting on him, but Lee didn’t have a single encounter with Charlie that season. 

In 2014, the hunt for Charlie heated up in a big way. The reason? The buck was, without a doubt, carrying Georgia typical archery record headgear around the woods, and Lee knew it. It wasn’t a matter of “that deer might be the new state record,” there was no question. He was an almost perfect 180-plus typical 10-point, but he wasn’t showing up as consistently as Lee wanted, making him difficult to pattern. 

In early October, Lee got a trail-cam pic of yet another Georgia giant that he turned his attention to—that deer’s name was Achilles (Sept., 2015 GON), and in mid-November Lee sealed the deal on Achilles, a 170-plus-inch 10-point. Achilles was a great deer, but Lee’s focus immediately returned to Charlie.

Lee left a camera where he had hunted Charlie unsuccessfully, and the day after harvesting Achilles, he went in to check his card. Lo and behold Charlie had visited Lee’s stand three times in daylight the day before Lee took Achilles.  This put a bonfire under Lee to relentlessly pursue Charlie. His boss granted him a month off work to try and accomplish this once in a lifetime achievement. From Nov. 12 to Dec. 12, Charlie showed up under Lee’s tree in daylight 13 times, unfortunately Lee was never there on these occasions. Seems the hunted may have patterned the hunter.

I met Lee during this period. We got along well, and he made me aware of his chase for Charlie. So when my phone buzzed just before Christmas 2014 with a text from Lee saying, “My season is over,” I immediately called him to get the details on his successful hunt. The news wasn’t what I anticipated at all. Charlie had cast his antlers and seemed to be in very poor health. To say that Lee was disappointed would be a severe understatement. I advised him to not hunt that area, and to find some way to feed Charlie. 

From the lowest of lows (above), when Charlie appeared on trail-cam in December of 2014 looking sick and having already dropped his antlers, to the next fall (below).

He built a homemade trough feeder and began feeding a combination of high quality protein feed and corn in it. Charlie literally ate there every day, sometimes multiple times per day, until he was pushed off the feeder from bucks that still had their racks. In January, Lee found Charlie again on trail-cam pics about a mile away, and Lee moved the feeder to him. Charlie was again bullied off the feeder by dominant bucks, a trend that would continue three more times over the next month. In February, after being bullied yet again, Charlie had moved—the difference was this time Lee couldn’t find him. He installed cameras in a 10-mile grid everywhere he had permission to do so, and finally during the third week of February, Lee located Charlie, obtained permission to install his feeder in a small woodlot, and fed him there through July. Charlie had put on weight and began to grow his final rack by May, but we had no idea how his ailment would affect his 2015 rack. By July, it was apparent that he would still be a tremendous deer, but no longer a contender for the state record. Record or not, Lee was excited, and nothing could keep him from hunting this tremendous whitetail… Well, almost nothing.

Lee didn’t know exactly where Charlie was living at the end of July, and he was scouting for places to hang cameras when he saw a kudzu patch. As he got closer to the patch, Charlie stood up from his bed, and the hunted and hunter were face to face for the first time. It turns out Charlie’s kudzu patch was not only his bedroom but his whole house. Lee had permission to be on the property, run cameras, take pictures of deer from a tree stand, etc. But he could not get permission to hunt there. 

Either Lee or his friend Drew Carroll filmed Charlie almost every single day of August and even filmed him from a tree stand on the opening day of archery season. There was no way around it, and nothing at all Lee could do to change the mind of the landowner about letting him hunt there. Lee’s only hope was that as the season progressed Charlie would change his feeding habits to acorns and a food plot. That would take time, and Lee was patient. Lee chose not to hunt on many occasions but instead sat in a stand filming Charlie and “deer sitting,” to assure that a poacher didn’t come in and kill the buck. No hunting was allowed at all on the property. 

In October, Charlie finally left the kudzu and returned to an area where he lived the previous year. Charlie showed up a couple nights consecutively, so Lee decided to plant a small winter wheat food plot in the hardwoods in an attempt to attract Charlie despite a sea of raining acorns. About this time Lee got a new job and couldn’t hunt both mornings and evenings. On days he chose to hunt the morning sit, Charlie would show that evening, and vice versa. Lee’s wheat food plot was beginning to get covered in leaves, so in the middle of the day he decided to take a leaf blower in and clean the plot, allowing the wheat to get necessary sunlight to grow. Lee checked both cams after clearing the plot of leaves and was completely bummed to see that Charlie hadn’t shown up in a week. 

After checking the second camera, Lee turned around to grab his blower, and there stood Charlie, looking right at him. The massive buck didn’t spook but knew something wasn’t right and walked away.

Lee decided to move his stand and the camera stand from the side of the plot to the high side above the plot. 

The first sit in the new set was unproductive, but the second sit on the morning of Nov. 14, 2015 proved to be the morning Lee had been waiting on for three years. At 7:40 in the morning, the very first deer to the wheat plot was Charlie. The buck strolled in at 25 yards and began feeding. Drew Carroll was filming and had Charlie full frame for three minutes. Lee came to full draw, released his arrow, and they both watched as the broadhead found its mark right behind Charlie’s shoulder. Lee came unglued—full on tears, shaking and uncontrollable emotions. 

Three years of nightly prayers, hundreds of hours in the stand, and tens of thousands of trail-cam pictures had led to this moment. Lee and Drew went to the landowner’s house before tracking and let them know about the shot. The landowner was just as excited as them and wanted to cook them breakfast, so they ate together before saying another prayer and taking up the blood trail. 

After 100 yards, the blood seemed to thin, and Lee began to second guess the shot—even though they had replayed it numerous times. Then he looked up the ridge, and there lay Charlie. Lee sprinted up the hill to put his hands on this giant buck for the first time. The hunt for Charlie was officially over, and almost every single sit, as well as hours of Charlie during the summer, were captured on video by Lee and Drew. They’ve made a documentary of the story on Vimeo. Stayed turned to GON for details on the documentary’s full release.