MR. T

October 31, 2018 trophy buck

A TRUE TEST OF PATIENCE, PERSEVERANCE, AND DETERMINATION

Written By: Nate Skinner

There’s something to be said about hunting a particular buck for an entire season. It takes discipline and motivation to have the type of tunnel vision necessary to focus on only one target while blocking out every other distraction. In the end, success can simply boil down to pure luck, and hopefully its the good kind and not the bad.

When Trinity Ranch Managing Partner, Carlos Zapatero, harvested an infamous trophy buck nicknamed Mr. T in January of 2017, the bad luck that he had experienced during the previous several weeks of planning, 100 plus hours of all-day sits, day in and day out in sub freezing temperatures while basically living off of water, peanut butter crackers, and jerky inside of a pop-up, tent style ground blind, was completely forgotten. The events that occurred within a matter of seconds on that late winter evening made the grueling stretch of time inside the blind that much more worth it, not to mention it showed Zapatero that his luck wasn’t that bad after all.

When Zapatero drew his bow and placed his sights on the buck’s vitals, he had no idea that Mr. T would become the Trinity Ranch record. With a final score of 233 inches, the brute sported 30 inch main beams and about 45 inches of solid mass. He had 18 scorable points. As if that wasn’t enough, the trophy also proudly wore a four to five inch drop tine. After six and half years of strutting his stuff across the ranch and evading hunters while slipping in and out of the south Texas brush, he had become a behemoth of deer. Mr. T was truly the type of buck that all deer hunters dream about.

According Zapatero, he had paying hunters that relentlessly pursued Mr. T during the previous deer season with no success.

“The buck just would not cooperate,” he explained. “He was like Houdini. We had plenty of trail camera photos of him but we could never come across him in person.”

After surviving another season, Mr. T put on 40 inches of antler growth between the spring and late summer of 2016. This was the result of the ranch receiving the perfect amount of rainfall at a key time, which produced an over abundance of natural forage. It was the ideal equation for the buck to experience immense amounts of growth and gains in the pasture.

“We had found his sheds late in the spring, and when he had fully grown back out in September of 2016 it was very clear he had put on a tremendous amount of inches,” informed Zapatero. “That’s when we decided to hunt him. He was approaching six and a half years old, and was surely in his prime. It was time for someone to go after Mr. T and experience success. I was ready for the challenge and planned to harvest him with stick and string.”

Zapatero says that preparing to hunt this incredible deer was a lot like scheming for war.

“I was going to battle,” he asserted. “It was evident that this was going to be a tough animal to encounter within bow range, and tricking him became my main objective.”

Zapatero claims that he and his partner, David Sunderland who is the Trinity Ranch owner, had a pretty good idea of where Mr. T was hiding out.

“We had ton of game camera photos of him in two different areas,” he elaborated. “One called the Park and another area that we refer to as Cassy’s Corner, named after Sunderland’s oldest daughter. Most of the photos of him were during nighttime hours, but he was always at one of these two locations regularly. We decided early on to hunt him from one, single location rather than hopping back and forth between blinds, which would risk spooking him out of both areas and lower our odds for success.”

After putting about five full days into hunting Mr. T at the Park, Zapatero finally received an opportunity to take a shot at the monster whitetail in December of 2016.

“When he finally came within my comfortable bow range, he was hanging out near a water trough at about 30-35 yards away,” Zapatero said. “I drew my bow when he looked away, hovered my sights steadily over his vitals, and let an arrow fly.”

Sunderland, who was filming, immediately congratulated Zapatero moments after the arrow made impact. The two were convinced he had made a great shot and that it was just a matter of time before they would be admiring the outstanding buck with their hands wrapped around his antlers.

To the pair’s dismay, footage on Sunderland’s video camera showed that Mr. T had actually ducked the arrow.

“After watching the replay of the shot, it was clear I hit him in the back strap instead of the vitals,” explained Zapatero. “The feeling that situation left inside of me was extremely unsettling. I feared I had just wounded the monarch of the ranch and that we would never see him again.”

For the next week they pulled camera cards daily, hoping that Mr. T would reappear healthy with just a flesh wound. After a week of checking trail camera photos each day, the deer finally resurfaced with a scar where the arrow had pierced his skin.

Two more weeks went by, December turned into January, and Zapatero’s and Sunderland’s worst fears came true—Mr. T “went dark.” In other words, he continued to only show up on camera at night. Zapatero had just about given up hope on having a chance to harvest him, when the buck began appearing on trail cameras during the afternoon hours at Cassy’s Corner.

“I made plans to basically live out of a ground blind at Cassy’s Corner, in hopes that eventually Mr. T would show himself while I was there,” Zapatero confessed. “Near sunset on my third day in a row to sit in the blind from sun up to sun down, I started seeing bucks come out of the wood work, chasing does. All of of a sudden right at dusk, Mr. T showed up.”

The buck came from Zapatero’s left and paused at about 35 yards away from the blind.

“He still would not give me a good shot,” he said. “I was beginning to have thoughts of chancing a less than ideal shot opportunity when he suddenly started walking right at the blind.”

Then Mr. T made a sharp turn to the right and looked as if he was just going to wander off into the brush. Leaning over as far as he could to get a clear shot out of the window of the blind, Zapatero grunted at the buck to get him to freeze long enough to send an arrow.

“My elbow was brushing Sunderland’s knee when I was at full draw,” Zapatero explained. “That’s how far I had to lean over to get the shot off.”

The arrow made solid contact behind Mr. T’s shoulder, but Sunderland felt that something had gone wrong. He asked Zapatero if the bowstring had struck his arm because he had heard a loud slapping noise when the arrow was released.

It turns out that the noise Sunderland heard was Zapatero’s arrow hitting the blind. Because he was in such an awkward position when he shot, the arrow didn’t pass through the window of the blind. Instead, it blew through the wall of the tent.

“I was concerned this had affected the amount of penetration the broad head was able to get through the buck’s hide, flesh and bones,” admitted Zapatero. “However, after replaying the footage from Sunderland’s camera, it appeared to be a decent shot. We were confident this time that we would soon put our hands on Mr. T.”

Zapatero and Sunderland decided to wait until sunrise to look for the buck. They found him in the morning, just 75 yards away from where he was standing when Zapatero’s arrow made impact with his rib cage.

The entire hunt for Mr. T was a grind, and Zapatero endured well over 100 hours in the blind spread across a 15 day span that was broken up into four day segments.

“I have hunted and guided hunts my entire life,” said Zapatero. “I have never been through this challenging of an experience before. This hunt was one for the books, and it’s one I’ll never forget. I don’t think Mr. T would’ve had it any other way.”