Hunter: Scott Marlowe
Points: 12 (6L, 6R)
County: Heard
Season: 2023-2024
Hunt Story
In the summer of 2023, I acquired a new hunting lease in Heard County. Our group had managed and hunted another lease in Coweta for over 15 years but, this property was located in a great spot and after walking it, we decided to add it as a second spot to hunt. Our first order of business was to see what we were working with and to try and catalog what bucks were using the property so we put out trail cams and crossed our fingers. The first picture to come across was a bruiser with split brows. After several weeks of going over cell-cam pictures we knew we had some great bucks on the property but that first buck with double split brows was the king of that property and as the king, he became known as “Elvis”. We quickly met the members from adjoining clubs and realized that we were in a great situation. The other hunters knew of the buck and were quick to share pictures of him from years past and help us dial in his home area. The focus of our efforts to take Elvis became an area known as the low road. We have an amazing group of hunters that I am lucky to share the woods with. None are selfish and getting Elvis became a true team effort. Yes, each of us wanted to be the one to harvest him but each person shared information and worked to help the other guy. Our guys had several encounters with Elvis over the first 3 weeks of gun season but we just never got everything to fall into place perfectly. On Nov. 22nd I checked the wind and it was right to hunt the low road and take my Crack at Elvis. Up until this point, I hadn't hunted the low road or Elvis yet but after sending out a group text and hearing that no one was planning on hunting the Heard tract that afternoon, I decided to give it a shot. One of our members had hung a portable and had an encounter with Elvis 2 days earlier. He strongly urged me to hunt his portable as opposed to the stand that we usually hunted. His sharing of information and even letting me hunt his stand would be a game changer for me. I started my hunt around 2:30 PM. It was breezy and the temperature was falling as I slipped into the portable that had been hung a few days earlier. One of the hallmarks of the low road area was that it holds a ton of deer and those who had hunted it always reported a constant flow of deer. As of 5:30 PM, I hadn't seen a single deer. I had anticipated that if Elvis was going to show up, he would come from in front of me out of a swamp where he beds and make his way up towards a feed station that he frequented. At around 5:40 p.m. I glanced over my right shoulder and saw a deer making his way down an old logging road. I pulled up the binoculars and quickly realized that it was a shooter coming down the road. I had to shift a little to the right to get a shot but, after a few seconds I had Elvis in my scope. The 350 legend sounded off as the crosshairs settled on his chest and I heard him running across the bottom and crash a few seconds later. From first sighting to hearing him crash was under 30 seconds which was a blessing because it happened so quickly that I never had time to get nervous. The phone calls and texts began and within a half hour, the cavalry had shown up to lend a hand and help get the old warrior loaded up. It was truly a memorable hunt and to share the recovery with family and friends will make it a hunt that I will never forget and a buck of a lifetime.
