The wind was blowing the afternoon of Nov. 4, when 29-year-old Robbie Flint and his 18-year-old brother, Gage Boyington, headed toward a low-lying swamp in Maine. The spot is only about 30 miles from the coast, where Flint makes his living catching scallops and lobsters commercially. The property itself is owned by a friend of Flint’s, and he’s hunted there for 20 years.
“I started hunting it with my dad and I know it pretty well,” Flint tells Outdoor Life. “We’d gotten trail camera photos of a really big buck, and learned he crossed out of the swamp in the evenings. That afternoon Gage walked up on a hilltop to sit and watch for the buck near the swamp, while I went to a lowland area.”
Flint sat on the ground, his back against a large tree in a strip of woods that created a funnel point for deer coming out of the swamp. There were some nearby fields and scattered apple trees that offered plenty of food for a buck.
“We thought of putting up tree stands but didn’t want to spook the buck by all the activity it would take to put them up,” says Flint, who lives in Cushing. “So, we sat on the ground, just like my grandfather did.”
Late that afternoon, Flint was sitting quietly against his tree and using a Primos can call to make bleats. Five minutes later he heard something behind him near the swamp. Twenty minutes passed without him seeing or hearing anything.
“I thought it had to be a deer I’d heard and slowly turned my head to look around the tree,” he said. “I had a weird feeling like I was being watched. I stayed real still and five minutes later I made two more half bleats with the can call.
“I looked at one of my shooting lanes, and just 10 yards away I saw a deer nose, head and rack cross into the lane. I raised my rifle, put the crosshairs on his shoulder, fired, and the buck dropped dead.”
The 150-grain Winchester bullet from his 7mm Remington bolt action rifle had done the job well. The deer never moved.
“I knew I just crushed him,” he says. “He had his head low, like a rutting buck. I use doe urine a lot, and I think the buck smelled that, plus the can call brought him close.”
His brother Gage was only 200 yards away and heard Flint shoot. He immediately called his brother, and Flint told Gage he’d shot an 8-pointer. He walked to where Gage was hunting, and together the brothers returned to where Flint’s massive buck was lying dead.
“We went up to my buck, I picked up its head, and when I saw its rack, I got weak in my knees,” Flint says. “I really didn’t know it was the big buck until we returned to get it.”
The brothers celebrated, then began the backbreaking task of dragging out the heavy-bodied buck. They didn’t field dress it there for fear that the entrails would draw coyotes, and Flint wanted Gage to return to the area to get another buck.
“It was the worst deer drag ever. We’d go sometimes just one foot before we had to rest. There were lots of downed timber and brush.”
They finally got the buck to a road, field-dressed the buck, and loaded it into their truck, where they could get a better look at the antlers.
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“It’s a non-typical with 26 points, and some folks think it has up to 29 points,” Flint says. “I didn’t try and measure it with a tape because I don’t know where to begin. A friend rough scored it at 222 inches.”
Flint says his younger brother is just getting into deer hunting, and that seeing the giant buck has fired up young Gage.
“He’s hunting hard to get a good buck,” Flint said. “My dad gave me that rifle I shot the buck with just before [he] passed away … I sure wish dad could have been there with Gage and me. That was one of the best times of our lives. We’ll relive and enjoy at moment forever.”
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