Unforgettable whitetail bucks are those big critters you see, and although they may be very close or a considerable distance away, weather conditions or other factors conspire against taking a shot.

I'm so mindful of a hunt some 30 years ago in Georgia with Bill Jordan, he of the RealTree camouflage pattern fame. We were hunting land just outside of Calloway Gardens that Jordan had leased for years. My trusty pre-1964 Winchester Model 70 in .264 Winchester Magnum was with me, and it was topped by a 1 1/2 X 10-power Swarovski scope.

Jordan pointed me at a tree with spikes pounded in, and up at nose-bleed altitudes was a stand. The sad thing about this great spot is Bill is tall and lanky while I am short with a 28-inch inseam. Those steps suited him well but were a good six inches too far apart for me. I tried to climb it, got six feet off the ground, and backed away from trying to climb any higher. Safety harnesses were not in vogue back then.

He described the buck as “massive,” and I was hoping to see him.

Yonder hill was fine, wind-wise, and I found a nice spot with a good view of the swale that held deer and the closest hillside. Jordan told me there was a 180-class whitetail buck with great huge antlers. I sat on the ground, and watched the swale and hill 150 yards away, and figured if that buck moved out, I'd send him a 140-grain air mail package.

The time passed slowly, and several respectable but smaller bucks stepped out to feed with the does, and this was well before the rut. I glassed every buck that walked out, and none fit Jordan's description.

I watched a 140-class buck for several minutes, and knew that Jordan had shot some trophies with a bow and knew that he knew the difference between a 140- and a 180-point buck. I returned my attention to the hillside, and saw one big deer feeding behind a roll in the hill. Its upper body was visible but any head gear  was not visible.

Body-wise, it looked like a blocky old buck. It was big enough in the body to meet Jordan's description, but the head was still down and out of view. The deer kept feeding along, pausing every few feet for a few minutes, but not once did he raise his head.

He acted as though he would walk up out of the little slot he was in, and I took a firm rest across my knees, and continued to watch the deer. The crosshairs settled on the its spine but my finger stayed off the trigger.

The deer kept its head down longer than I'd ever seen any deer do so, and then it dawned on me that it was relying on a big doe that was 10 feet uphill. That made me doubly suspicious that it was the big old buck Jordan had told me about.

It was probably the buck but no antlers were visible.

The deer kept moving slightly away from me, but I know my rifle and knew what it could do. Even a 200-yard shot would be easy to make, and I’d made many such shots at nice bucks in the past.

Eventually the sun went down, and I'd watched this deer for 90 minutes and it had never raised its head. I kept the scope trained on the deer as it kept moving, and glanced at my watch every few minutes. The deer was now approaching 200 yards, and still his head stayed down.

It can't be a doe, I thought, she'd be raising her head constantly. The little roll in the ground was flattening out, and I knew that soon the deer would reveal itself as a big buck or doe.

The cross-hairs were on the spine, and if it turned out to be a buck, a minute shift in my aiming point would put the scope on the heart-lung area. My watch showed five minutes to go, and with the light condition being what they were that evening, things were getting fuzzy around the edges.

Time was running out. I’m mentally urging him to raise his head.

One minute to go, and I estimated the deer would be visible from the head back. The view of that deer was getting milky looking, and then it happened.

It was a buck, and a huge massive rack loomed up in the gathering darkness. I flicked off my safety, and as I did, the shooting time and the light ended. I sat there, my scope trained on a buck I no longer could see.

My view for a split second was of 11 or 12 high and heavy tines, an almost impossibly wide spread of nearly 26 inches, and G-2s and G-3s that appeared to be 12 inches long and very thick. There was a sense of great mass to this buck, and it had to be the one Jordan told me about.

I hunted that buck for three more nights, and never saw him again. It's a buck I'll always remember because I had been hunting less than a quarter-mile from Calloway Gardens, and figured that most of the resort's visitors had no clue this giant buck lived nearby. I figured he would gross well over 200 inches.

He had lived a very long life, and having seen him for that brief instant, had changed my life and how I would look at and think about big bucks in the future. He truly was unforgettable.