As a kid growing up with a family whom had piles of land to roam and pilfer. I had no boundary’s to the amount of deer hunting I got to do. In fact my grandmother was actually the head of a hunting club called Belmont Hunting club in Belmont AL. which encompassed several thousand acres made up of leases and family land.
With plenty of deer hunting heritage that ran through my family I was eat up chasing deer at a young age. In fact that heritage dated back to when deer were only found along the Tombigbee River there in Sumter county in the 1940s. In our family farm home there was a huge dining room that had 7 or 8 deer heads and two of those were these legendary bucks.
Those two deer were killed by my great grand father and one was a 8 point that was 14in wide and scored 164 and the other was a nontypical that scored 239 and was known as the “48 point”. They were killed before there was really any scoring system. 100s of hunters would stop and ask to see the deer heads and my family always welcomed them in to see the heads.
Later in life I inherited these deer heads and now they are here in my home safe and sound. We still hunt those same places where these deer were hunted on horseback with shotguns dating back to the 1940s, but of course in a different way and time.
Never once did I ever know Houndstooth would be my family’s future when I was a kid roaming the family farm where these giant deer were killed. It’s pretty surreal to know they are a big part of Alabama deer hunting history and an even bigger part of whom Houndstooth and myself have become!
I will attach an article for you to read and enjoy on these historic Alabama bucks. They are worth the read! https://aonmag.com/hunting/sumter-county-state-record-bucks-that-werent/
