Hunters know that the last hour of daylight can be the most likely time for deer to appear. So when that magic hour began, Matt Wentz, Lehighton, was at first planning to ignore whoever was trying to reach him by cell phone.

"The phone was vibrating in my pocket, so I took a look and saw that it was my daughter, Taya," he said. "She had just arrived at the place where we hunt, but she needed help setting her crossbow."There was no way he could be mad at her."I'm so happy that she enjoys getting out and hunting," Wentz said. "So I thought, okay, I'll walk out, take care of that, and walk back in."And now, who knows? Was is that slight disturbance that got the huge buck to show himself? At about 3:30, Wentz had gotten a glimpse of a large buck moving through a scrub pine thicket about 75 yards from him. He couldn't see the size of the rack, and the buck had walked out of sight.At about 4, he'd gotten the text from his daughter, set her crossbow and returned to the spot he'd picked. At 4:45, he saw something moving back down towards the thicket, in general retracing the same path the buck had taken when it left earlier.There was a comfortable ladder stand only about 15 yards from the spot Wentz had chosen. In fact, there are about twenty stands on the property where the family and friends hunt, which is private land adjoining state game land."I intended to go to that close ladder stand, but when I walked in with my friend Jeremy (Mathias) we went past some really good scrapes," he recalled. "They were so fresh that you could smell them."Jeremy had already planned to hunt from a different ladder stand. Wentz started towards the stand that was part of his original plan, but changed his mind.Good thing."I decided to hunt from the ground, although I hadn't done that before," he said. "I just cleared an area and sat."At about 4:45, the body he'd seen working down towards the thicket stepped into the open. Without dwelling on the rack, with just a glance, he knew it was the biggest buck he'd ever seen."I coached myself not to make eye contact, because I feel they sense that," Wentz said. "It seemed that he was walking slowly and it took him forever to get into range.""When he finally was closer, only about thirty yards away, he suddenly stuck his head up," he added. "He had nailed me and was on me; he didn't wind me but definitely got a sense that something wasn't right."Wentz leveled his crossbow and shot an arrow. The buck wheeled and ran out of sight."I only saw him for about twenty yards and then he was back into the thicket," Wentz said. "He was headed towards the ladder stand that Jeremy was in and I was hoping he would see him."Wentz stayed in his general area, collected his arrow and his thoughts. Above all, he didn't want to take any actions that would cause him to not recover the deer. He met up with Jeremy when it got dark and both decided it would be best to wait until morning to recover the buck.The next morning, they took the buck's trail and found that it had run straight up the mountainside, then doubled back on its own trail and veered off to the side. It had ended up only about 50 yards from where it was shot.The buck's rack Boone & Crockett gross score is 210, with a net score of 201 as a non-typical. The Northeast Big Buck Club has rated it the best buck in Pennsylvania for 2014.