Like a lot of deer hunters, Seth Sorrell, of Shoals, Indiana, runs multiple trail cameras on the property he hunts. And over the last four years, Sorrell has captured hundreds of trail cam pictures of the same buck. Studying these photos has given him a detailed idea of where the deer travels and when.
“The one I called ‘Possum,’ I first noticed [him] in 2021,” Sorrell tells Outdoor Life. “I knew that young buck had great rack potential, and I watched him grow over the years until he was truly a giant trophy whitetail.”
Sorrell says he nicknamed the buck Possum because many of the photos of the buck also had a live possum feeding nearby.
“It was uncanny how often a possum was in the same photo with him,” says Sorrell, 36. “The name ‘Possum’ just fit that buck perfectly.”
Sorrell passed on Possum several times in previous years, usually during archery season, because he knew the buck’s potential. Last year was the first season he considered taking the buck, but the right opportunity never came.
This year, on Nov. 11, he was in a tree stand with his Matthews bow when Possum stepped out. He’d just heard a deer making a scrape under a cedar tree.
“I saw him at 52 yards,” Sorrell recalls. “The buck offered a shot at 43 yards and I took it, trying to thread an arrow through a small opening in cover.”
He released, and his arrow center-punched a 2-inch-thick sapling that he hadn’t seen. Possum escaped unharmed, and the buck disappeared for a time — as Sorrell knew it would, based on its habits in previous years. Hunting pressure on nearby properties had also been picking up.
Sorrell didn’t see Possum on camera again until Nov. 20. By that point, the buck looked run down and ragged, and it had broken off a distinctive, 6-inch drop tine — undoubtedly the result of fighting during the rut.
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The next day, Sorrell saw photos of two large groups of does in an area that was roughly two miles from where he’d missed Possum during bow season. But he and his 12-year-old stepson, Gunner Gibson, figured the buck would be looking for those does at some point, and they decided to hunt the buck the following day, Nov. 22. Well before daylight, as they drove out to the spot, they saw a live possum in their truck’s headlights.
“We looked at each other and knew it was a good sign.”
They got into their lock-on tree stand well before dawn. And shortly after sunrise, with fog lifting out of a nearby swamp, Possum showed.
“Gunner saw him first through binoculars, and I brought up the .270 Remington 700 rifle that my grandfather gave me, and took him at 120 yards,” Sorrell said. “He went about 40 yards and went down.”
The pair climbed out of their stand, field dressed the buck, and loaded Possum into an ATV. When they arrived back home word had already spread, and a group of friends and family were waiting there to see the deer and congratulate the two hunters.
The dressed buck weighed an estimated 175 pounds, far lighter than what Sorrell thinks Possum weighed prior to the rut. The deer’s 11-point rack – down from 12 with the broken drop tine – green-scored just over 190 inches.
“I’ll have Possum made into a shoulder mount by a taxidermist, and displayed on a whisky barrel base,” Sorrell says. “There will be a tree as part of the mount, and I’m going to have a mounted possum hanging by its tail near the deer.”
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