It was an encouraging sign. Nearly 45 minutes into the track, the group jumped a buck out of a ravine.

"We usually leave a deer for eight hours if it was gut shot," Scheidegger said. "But the snow was messing everything up and I felt sick again that we weren't going to get him."

The group continued tracking the deer, but they were running low on daylight. Then, about 200 yards from the spot they jumped the buck, they heard a noise.

"We had lost most of the light, so we just stood there trying to figure out the noise," Scheidegger said. "I took one step forward and the buck jumped 20 yards away."

The deer's bed was full of blood, so they continued following the trail another 30 yards when they saw a spot where the deer stopped.

After sitting for almost two hours, Scheidegger decided to try something that had worked for him before . . . Scheidegger still-hunted along a creek bottom . . . thinking the tactic wasn't such a great idea . . . when he heard a deer splashing in the creek 50 yards away.

"I told Brian we just had to get out of the woods, so we did," Scheidegger said. "We ran back to our grandparents' house for flashlights but didn't even go back to the woods. It was snowing so hard you could barely see. The sick feeling in my stomach returned as I worried the buck would never be found because of the snow."

The hunter got little sleep that night. At daybreak, Scheidegger and his father, Duane, met Gene and Brian at Scheidegger's grandparents' house.

It looked like a winter wonderland with everything covered in snow.

No sign of the deer hit the night before was visible.

"The only thing I saw was an orange hat Brian and I hung in a tree where we had turned around the night before," Scheidegger said. "We all got to that spot and couldn't find anything. My gut was turning about 100 miles an hour. I didn't think we would find him."

The group spread out to look for what they hoped would be a dead deer.

"For some reason, I went around a brushpile, then walked north about 100 yards right to him," Scheidegger remembered. "I couldn't believe my eyes. I was so pumped up they said I was just running through the woods dragging the deer myself. I was so happy I had tears in my eyes. After the excitement of finding the deer, we starting counting points and there were 18. My brother and I said that this was the year that something big had to go down and it did."

And big it was. The rack totaled 17 points -- a 10-point frame with 7 non-typical points. Those abnormal points accounted for 34 6/8 inches of extra bone. The buck sported an awesome 23-inch inside spread. And the length of the main beams is unbelievable -- just less than 29 inches.

All totaled, the great buck netted a non-typical score of 210 6/8 inches.

It would have been easy for Scheidegger not to follow the deer's tracks after the first shot and miss along the creek bottom that morning. But he didn't quit and his persistence paid off with the kind of monster buck that most hunters see only in their dreams