Alberta is well-known for producing world-class game of all kinds, but especially giant whitetails, and on cold day last month, Nathan Dahl connected on one of the heavy-horned monsters the province is famous for. “Over the last few years, I'd passed on dozens of bucks ranging from 160 to 175 inches that were great deer, but I knew the area produced better,” Dahl told Field & Stream. “After getting trail-cam pics of this buck, I knew what I was waiting for, and on November 9th it all came together. I’m still speechless to lay hands on such an incredible deer.”
Dahl first became aware of the buck in the fall of 2023, when his cameras captured pics of a buck he figured was in the mid-180s. “We hunted him in the final few days of that season and had a single sighting of a buck that might have been him,” Dahl recalled. “Our season closed November 30, and we got a pic of him that day, then he disappeared.” Despite lots of searching and camera deployments in the spring and early summer, Dahl was unable to locate the buck until mid-July, when he got a single pic of a buck with similar frame. Then, as big deer frequently do, the buck vanished again for three months.
Related: The Biggest Bucks of 2024
When this fall's season began, Dahl was focused on another 180-class buck. But then the big guy showed up in mid-October. “This time he was working multiple scrapes, and we were getting him on multiple cameras every two or three days for a couple week," Dahl said. "Then, like all big deer seem to do, he disappeared for another entire week. But when he showed up again on November 6, just two days before my vacation started, I figured I had a chance to catch up with him.”
Dahl did exactly that on November 9th. He and his outfitter friend Kevin McNeil, owner of Bluesky Outfitters, had put up a tree stand and a ground blind on public ground in a small natural meadow bordered by thick timber and miles of hardwoods. Bucks had laid down many scrapes in the area over the years, and Dahl had shot his first B&C buck there in 2019. Dahl knew from experience that intercepting a mature buck in the area might takes days of patiently waiting. “I sit quietly, with no heater and no snacks, and I hit the rattling horns hard and often,” he said. “I call in many bucks and just wait for the one that makes me think Wow!
After hitting the rattling horns, Dahl was watching some does feeding in the meadow and they kept looking into the timber and acting nervous. Looking that direction he caught movement in the timber, and as a deer started to emerge, he glimpsed antlers through his binocular and knew in an instant what he was looking at. Trading the glass for a gun, Dahl made good on the shot; dropping the buck in its tracks. “I walked up to him and knew he was a giant,” he said. “I figured him in the 190s.”
Related: Kansas Hunter Arrows 250-Inch Drop-Tine Dream Buck
In fact, Dahl was a bit shy on his guess. With 25-inch main beams and the biggest mass measurements of 7⅜ inches (the smallest was 5⅛), the buck gross scored 202-0/8 B&C. After calling friends for help dragging and photographing his monster, Dahl realized the deer had dropped only 20 yards from where he killed his first B&C buck in 2019. “Two book heads off the same acre of property, and public land no less,” he said. “This is an example of the incredible land us Albertans are privileged to hunt on.”
