Charles Harvey kneels by his fine 16-point non-typical trophy buck, which scores a whopping 202 1/8 points. Photo by Dean Weimer

In November 2001, then-13-year-old deer hunter Charles Harvey of Dunkirk harvested a very respectable 10-point buck during the shotgun season. This 120-class buck became the family record, and was an excellent specimen for a young hunter's first deer ever.

"I've been hunting forever, since I was 6," the young hunter stated. In fact, Charles' family and other local hunters told the young man that this would be the largest buck he'd ever kill in Delaware County. Even good bucks of this caliber were rare in this heavily agricultural area of the state.

Jason Rees, Charles' stepfather, has been hunting this area for several seasons without harvesting anything close to this size of a buck. "That is what they told him about the 10-pointer. They said that is as big as they get here," he said. Like many other areas of the state, the age structure of bucks was very low; very few bucks made it to maturity. It did appear that big bucks just don't exist there. Simply put, they didn't exist because too many bucks were being taken while too young. That left very few bucks to ever approach an age when their true genetic potential is realized. At the time, it didn't really matter to Charles, as he was very happy with his first deer.

But on the morning of Nov. 20, 2004, he would prove all of the experts wrong by harvesting a buck that was not only larger than his 2001 buck, but also shattered the county's record buck in the process. Charles, Jason, his mother, Karen Rees, and his uncle, Kevin Rees, all arrived at their chosen deer stands in their hunting area around 6 a.m.

Their hunting area is typical of this east-central Indiana county. It is composed of very large agricultural fields broken up by occasional small-to medium-sized wood lots. There are some larger stands of timber in the area, but they are few and far between.

Charles, Jason and Karen would go to stands in different parts of what the group calls the east woods. This wood lot sits at the southeast corner of their 160-acre hunting area. Karen went to her stand in the northeast corner of the wood lot. Charles would be perched in his favorite stand in a point that is actually the southwest corner of the woods.

Approximately 30 yards directly west of Charles' stand is the corner of a small 3- to 5-acre wood lot known as the triangle woods. Deer naturally funnel along the edge of the east woods and travel past Charles' stand as they move to the triangle woods. Charles actually had a brief encounter with a 120-class buck in this same stand earlier in the archery season.

"I saw a pretty good 8-pointer during bow season that I thought I was going to get a chance to shoot," Charles said.

Unfortunately for the hunter, the buck never came into bow range. This would actually prove to be a good thing.

Jason would set up 100 yards east of Charles on the edge of the east woods. Uncle Mike would be set up several hundred yards across a picked bean field, northwest of the wood lot where the other hunters were posted in a woods known to the group as the west woods.

A county dirt road runs parallel along the east edge of the west woods from north to south. Mike was set up inside of the west woods, far enough away that he couldn't see the road. Thus, the stage was set for a world-class deer hunt.