Issue link: http://maconmagazine.uberflip.com/i/439892
DECEMBER/JANUARY 2015 MACON MAGAZINE I 103 A s I'm writing this we're only in the fourth week of deer season. At my property, in Dooly County, we haven't seen much action yet, though we have some promising pictures on the trail cams. Every hunter has had an elusive mystery buck in his or her life, that one that you see everywhere except when you're in the stand. When I was a kid, there was one we called "sludge foot." "is was before trail cams, so his name referred to the size of the print his foot le# in the ground, which, obviously, was huge. "is year, our mystery buck is called "e Higideo Buck, an old, mean 14-point that has become like the white bu$alo at our deer camp. When I was around 10, a fellow from my hometown named James Higideo disappeared into thin air. Not a trace. It stumped everyone, as he was a well-known member of our community. Eventually Robert Stack from the show "Unsolved Mysteries" came to town with psychics in tow and told the sheri$ 's department to drain two ponds where they would %nd his body. "ey did this, on air, with no results and to this day nobody knows where James Higideo is, except maybe James Higideo and whoever maybe took him. James' old farmhouse, which sat on my deer lease, was just torn down, and our %re pit is right next to the only thing that remains of it, his %replace. We sit around it sometimes, and try to imagine what ever happened to him. "e two ponds that they drained on "Unsolved Mysteries" are right next to a couple of our deer stands. Walking to them in the mornings is a little eerie to say the least. And the big buck that we last saw on our cams in early September has so far proven to be just as elusive and mysterious as the case of James. But in case I ever see him, my friend Richie Jones showed me some great ways to prepare venison this season.