TBGA banquets pay tribute to Texas’ top big game animals

By Matt Williams Outdoors Writer

The Texas Big Game Awards regional banquet season is in full swing across Texas. TBGA banquets are held each year to showcase the top big game animals taken across the state. Several events are history. Others are on tap before summer is out.

The Pineywoods Region 6 TBGA banquet is set for July 12 at the Fredonia Hotel and Convention Center in Nacogdoches. Post Oak Savannah (Region 5) hunters will gather on Sept. 20 at the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center in Athens. The Cross Timbers banquet is set for Sept. 13 at the Abilene Civic Center; Coastal Prairies (Region 7), Sept. 6 at the Seguin Colesium in Seguin; and the Panhandle (Region 2) on August 23 at Fair Park Auditorium in Childress.

Open to the general public, the banquets are built around informative seminars leading up to a good meal and award presentations to every participating hunter who harvests a buck that meets the minimum scoring criteria for their region.

There is always lots of neat stuff to see at a TBGA banquet. However, the reason most folks show up is to compare racks and exchange hunting tales from the past.

Some interesting deer hunting fodder turned up around eastern Texas this year. The story behind the highest scoring non-typical reported in Region 6 is the first to come to mind. The Gregg County buck was shot on Thanksgiving weekend by J.T. Smith of Kilgore.

Smith’s deer season started off as the worst he can remember. He wounded and lost two deer early in the year. He shot a third deer, a spike, on the morning of November 25 while hunting a friend’s property just outside the Kilgore city limits. That deer went missing, as well. Actually, it was stolen.

“The buck got up and ran off down a hill while I was standing there looking at it,” Smith recalled. “I knew I had hit him good, so I was reluctant to shoot him again. I figured I would find him at the bottom of the hill.”

Smith was trailing the deer when he heard the slam of a truck door alongside a nearby county road that ran adjacent to the property where he was hunting.

“I didn’t think much about until I got there and my deer was gone,” Smith said. “There were tire tracks in the ditch and I could see where they had dragged it under the fence and loaded it in their truck. I couldn’t believe someone would do that. They stole my deer.”

Smith said he was so disappointed by the turn of events that he almost hung up his rifle for good, but one of his young sons talked him out of it later that afternoon back at the 140-acre family farm.

Good thing. Just before dark, Smith brought down a whopper 18 pointer that grosses 186 3/8, 182 net.

“It was a pretty neat deal,” Smith said. Nobody around here had a ever seen that deer before. To kill him on the old family farm was pretty special.”

Frank Dewey knows how to appreciate a home grown trophy buck taken from open range. He also knows the value of patience in deer hunting.

Dewey, 64, owns a small engine repair shop and 25 acres in Hunt County. During deer season he pretty much lives at the small cabin he erected on his small spread just outside Quinlan.

“It’s what I call my home away from home,” Dewey said. “I go there to relax and wind down.”

Dewey’s deer season was pretty much uneventful until the afternoon of December 29. An self-admitted meat hunter, Dewey said he had passed on several young bucks early in the season because he wanted to do the right thing.

“Time was running out,” Dewey said. “I decided before I went to the stand that afternoon that I was going to bring home some meat if I saw a deer with antlers, no matter how big it was.”

Dewey went home a pile of venison and a king size rack to boot after a 14-point typical suddenly appeared in front of his stand, roughly 75 yards away. The official TBGA score on the antlers is 168 2/8, 159 2/8 net. It ranks No. 3 among Region 5 typicals reported last season.

“When I got to him and saw that rack I proceeded to get the cotton mouth for about two hours,” Dewey said. “I had never seen anything like it in all my life.”

One of last season’s most impressive deer hunting stories statewide unfolded in Grayson County in far northeast Texas. The only legal means or methods for taking deer in that county is with archery gear or crossbow.

A number of outstanding bucks have come out of Grayson County during the last 10 years, many of them from the Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge that borders Lake Texoma. Hunts to refuge are allotted by limited draw. Archers must pass a shooting proficiency test to hunt there.

To my knowledge “the Hag” didn’t produce a Boone and Crockett class buck last season. But private private lands across the county were on fire with bruisers.

All total, Grayson County listed four B&C bucks in 2007-08. Amazingly, two of them came from 330-acres of open range land shared by Brock and Mike Benson of Sherman. Together the bucks arrowed by the father/son team net more than 402 B&C inches.

Brock Benson’s deer, a 24 pointer, grosses 210 4/8, 201 2/8. His father’s buck, a 22 pointer, grosses 208 2/8, 201 1/8 net. Mike Benson’s buck may have scored as much as 220 had it not been for a couple of broken tines.

The other two Grayson County whoppers reported last season were collected by Donnie Herod, 214 1/8 gross, 201 1/8 net; and Jim Lillis, 181 2/8 gross, 176 2/8 net. The Lillis buck is especially remarkable because of its near perfect 10-point typical frame.

Interestingly, the Benson’s weren’t the only father/son team to score big in Texas last season. Marko and Mark Barrett of San Antonio collected the No. 1 and No. 3 TBGA Region 8 non-typicals off their family owned Las Raices Ranch in Webb County..

Marko Barrett’s deer, a 36-pointer, grosses 275 7/8, 269 2/8 net. It ranks as the highest scoring TBGA non-typical of all time. Mark Barrett’s 21-point buck grosses 228 4/8, net 220 7/8.

Deer hunters are among the world’s best story tellers. The class of 2007-08 will have lots to talk about upcoming TBGA banquets. To learn more or to pre-register, www.texasbiggameawards.com.

Matt Williams is a free lance writer based in Nacogdoches. He can be reached by e-mail, mattwilliams@netdot.com.