December 22, 2017 - John Idrogo has learned a lot about the dos and don'ts of deer hunting over the years. In hindsight, the 48-year-old hunter from Tyler claims the most valuable - and toughest - of those lessons is one he had much rather forget.
Shift to the 2014 deer season. It was a dreary day during the Thanksgiving holidays and Idrogo was sharing a Henderson County box blind with his young son, J.J. Only eight years old at the time, J.J. had never taken a crack at a deer before and he was anxious to get blood on his hands for the first time.
The woods had been particularly quiet and the two hunters hadn't seen much other than squirrels and songbirds. Idrogo had grown so bored in the blind that he reached for his cell phone to check e-mails while his son peered out the window looking for any signs of movement.
That's when the wake up call came.
"We were just sitting there and J.J. yelled 'look dad, it's a buck!'" Idrogo recalled. "I'm like, yeah, right. When I looked up, there he stood. It was a really nice 10-pointer. He was broadside to us, probably 70 yards away."
What happened next hatched into a nightmare that has haunted J.J.'s father ever since.
Rather than handing the .223 to his son, Idrogo grabbed the rifle and hastily shot at the deer himself. J.J., meanwhile, just sat there and watched as the buck ran away and melted into the brush.
Realizing the crappy deed he had just carried out, Idrogo said he was instantly stricken with guilt and grief.
"I felt terrible about it," he said. "What I did was very selfish. I didn't even hand him the gun. I shot at the deer myself and I felt guilty as heck about it. I told J.J. right then that I was sorry - that I'd never do that to him again."
Indrogo eventually got a little redemption when J.J. shot his first doe, but the shameful feeling of having robbed his son of the opportunity to shoot the buck lived on in the back of his mind until last month. That's when J.J., now 11, finally brought his dad's conscious some serious relief in a really big way.
Hunting on a 1,200-acre low-fence lease in Smith County on opening weekend, the youth hunter shot a whale of a buck that may be the highest scoring open range non-typical whitetail ever shot in the county. It is by far the biggest Smith County non-typical ever reported to the Texas Big Game Awards, a hunter recognition program run jointly by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and the Texas Wildlife Association since 1992.
Idrogo's buck, a massive 17 pointer, was originally scored for TBGA at 190 6/8 gross and 178 net B&C by TPWD wildlife biologist Larry LeBeau of Tyler. LeBeau said he had some questions regarding a few of the measurements on the freak antlers, so he invited fellow biologist and official B&C scorer Billy Lambert of Hearne to do a re-score. The official green gross score before 60 days drying stands at 186, Idrogo said.
The 5 1/2-year-old buck will fall well shy of the 195 net score required for non-typical entry to the B&C all-time record book, but you won't hear J.J. complaining about it. The Brown Elementary 5th grader is much too busy soaking up the attention and learning all he can about his newest passion.
"I used to watch Netflix a lot, but now I watch the Outdoor Channel and hunting videos on You Tube all the time," the youth hunter said. "I'm learning a lot about deer hunting and all the different products out there. It's pretty neat."
One aspect of the game that Idrogo has become particularly obsessed with is horn rattling during the rut.
Understandably so. Witnessing a giant buck coming to the sounds of a buck fight is a rare sight that just about every deer hunter dreams about, but only a handful are fortunate enough to experience in a lifetime of hunting. For an 11-year-old kid to see such a thing can have life-changing implications.
"My dad rattled and next thing we knew there he was, looking for a fight," J.J. said. "I'll never forget it."
Indeed, there was some serious mojo dancing in the air along the Sabine River bottom during opening weekend of the 2017 deer season. To hear John Idrogo tell it, he believes the big buck his son shot on the morning of Nov. 5 was truly a Godsend.
"I remember laying in my cot the night before," he said. "We had just finished eating soup I had warmed over campfire when a friend texted sme an Internet link to a story about a giant typical buck that a guy (Bryan O'Neal of Quitman) had killed in Smith County last year. After I read that story I put my hand on my Bible and thought to myself how great it would be if J.J. could kill a big buck like that. I swear, that was the last thought I had before I went to sleep."
The Hunt of a Lifetime
Opening weekend turned off unseasonably warm and muggy across eastern Texas but the Idrogos decided to head to the lease anyway. They made it to their stand well before sunrise on Sunday morning and saw the first signs of activity about 7 a.m.
Their stand is positioned between several blinds on a woodline at the edge of a long pipeline, providing a clear view for several hundred yards to the left and right.
"The first deer we saw was a pretty nice buck," John Idrogo said. "I looked at him through my binoculars but he was way too far to shoot, probably close to 400 yards. He disappeared and we never saw him again."
Nearly an hour passed with no action and Idrogo could tell his son was beginning to get antsy. That's when he decided to reach for the rattle bag in his pack.
The Magic of Rattling
A rattle bag contains several hard plastic cylinders that are bound in a loose cluster. Placed between two hands and rubbed side-to-side the cylinders create clashing, tickling noises intended to emulate the sounds of two bucks in a sparring match. The idea is to stir the curiosity of other bucks and bring them closer. The trick doesn't always work, but when it does it can be like magic.
"I've been hunting for 32 years and fooled around with rattling off and on," Idrogo said. "I've never had much luck doing it, but I've always been intrigued by it. I'd been seeing quite a bit of buck activity driving to work that week. I thought they might be chasing does, so I thought what the heck and gave it a try."
Idrogo said he placed the rattle bag outside the stand window and rubbed it vigorously for about 30 seconds.
"J.J. sort of perked up after that," he said. "We were both watching the pipeline when all of the sudden this buck stepped out, probably 150 yards away. I had no idea how big he was at first, but when I looked at him through the binoculars I could tell he was really thick and tall. He had something hanging off on one side that looked like a drop tine, but it turned out to be a vine from tearing up the brush."
J.J. is convinced the sounds from his dad's rattle bag had put the buck in the mood to brawl.
"He was walking across the pipeline, sort of looking back and forth like he was looking for a fight," he said. "He slowed down a little bit and that's when I took the shot. At first I thought I'd missed because he didn't do much. His tail didn't twitch or anything. He just kept walking for about 20 yards. Then he just fell over."
John Indrogo said it wasn't until they walked up close to the buck that he realized the true majesty of the animal his son had taken.
"He was huge," he said. "The grass on the pipeline was pretty tall, but we could see antlers sticking up everywhere. He was giant body-wise, too. I'm guessing he weighed at least 225 pounds. J.J. was jumping up and down like he'd just won the lottery."
In reality, he had.
Bucks like this one don't come along on open range very often. And when they do, it sometimes comes a total surprise to everyone involved.
According to Idrogo, the buck his son shot came as a complete shock to everyone else on the lease.
"There are eight members on our club and four of them hunt pretty seriously," he said. "Nobody had ever seen this deer before. No game camera pictures or anything. He just showed out of nowhere and I'm so glad he did. I handed J.J. the gun instantly. I don't care if he had 100 points. I'd do it all over again."
Matt Williams is a freelance writer based in Nacogdoches. He can be reached by e-mail, mattwillwrite4u@yahoo.com.
