Last summer, Don Brenneman and his son-in-law Derek Workman began getting trail cam photos of a huge buck on Brenneman’s 100-acre farm in far western Maryland’s Garrett County. Brenneman says they started calling the buck “Big Ten.”
“We figured he’d measure 140 to 150 inches — a great buck for our area,” Brenneman tells Outdoor Life. “We were hoping to get him in that year’s archery season, but acorns started dropping in area woods and the buck disappeared for us.”
Other hunters in the region reported seeing the buck later that winter. So, Brenneman was confident the deer had survived the 2024-25 hunting season.
“We started getting trail pictures of him again this spring. He no longer was a 10-pointer, but a 14-pointer, which we renamed ‘Double Ohh!! Seven,’” says Brenneman, a 68-year-old retiree who lives in Grantsville. “Based on the 2024 season we figured the time to take him would be early in the 2025 archery season that began Sept. 5.”
Brenneman believed the best chance to take the deer was on a 1-acre alfalfa plot the deer frequented. An elevated box blind stood on the field edge, but Brenneman needed an east wind to hunt it effectively.
A west wind during the first week of Maryland’s archery season made hunting the spot impossible, says Brenneman. But on Sept. 9, the wind shifted out of the east, and Brenneman was in the stand on the field edge at dawn.
“I saw several bucks and turkeys in the alfalfa, but not Double Ohh!! Seven. I left at 9 a.m. and got back in the stand that afternoon.”
There was still a good east wind blowing, and the huge buck finally showed in the far side of the food plot late that afternoon.
“He fed up the hill through the alfalfa from 60 yards, then 50 and 40,” Brenneman explains. “I worked hard to control my breathing. But no luck – I was breathing like a freight train … Finally, at 24 yards he turned slightly, giving me a look at his shoulder.”
The buck was downhill, and Brenneman was worried the deer soon might smell him. He steadied his crossbow and pressed the trigger.
“He whirled and crashed into the woods,” Brenneman says. “I could catch glimpses of him as he ran about 100 yards and disappeared over a steep hill.”
The hunter sat in the blind to compose himself for about 10 minutes. Then he got down from his blind to check where the buck had stood when he shot. He found the arrow immediately.
“There was blood the length of the shaft, but not what I had expected. There was no blood where the deer went into the woods, so I backed out.”
He returned that night, several hours later, with Derek and some neighbors to help track the buck. They found slight blood sign, but the trail was tough to follow as it went downhill toward a ravine.
Suddenly, as Brenneman tried to follow the trail, he saw Derek waving his flashlight at him. He’d found the buck dead near a fallen tree.
“What a relief it was to walk up to him,” he says. “The arrow had passed through the heart and gone into the stomach cavity. The intestines had closed the exit wound, eliminating any chance of a decent blood trail.”
They field-dressed the buck and then dragged it out around deadfalls and other debris using a sled, which made the ordeal much easier.
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With the 60-day drying period complete, the buck was recently measured by Bob Newton, an official scorer with Bucks Bears and Stags. The organization is the state-recognized record keeping organization.
According to Newton’s measurements, the buck gross scores 202 inches. Its typical rack tallies 193 6/8s inches, with an added 8 2/8 inches of non-typical tine length.
Brenneman chose to have the deer recognized in the velvet typical record category, where it nets 180 3/8 inches. With that score, it’s now the No. 1 velvet buck in Maryland in both the typical and nontypical categories. It’s also the only 200-inch whitetail that’s been taken in Maryland thus far this season.
Brenneman will have a shoulder mount made of his estimated 5.5-year-old buck, which wasn’t a particularly large-bodied deer at well under 200 pounds.
“A friend of mine says that ‘Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.’”
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