KAUFMAN COUNTY GIANT

News of several whopper bucks has trickled across the outdoors desk this fall. Just when I thought the tales couldn’t get any taller, along comes word of a true East Texas giant out of Kaufman County, courtesy of Courtland Sewell of Scurry.

Sewell’s remarkable non-typical was a fairy tale buck in every respect, one that appeared from nowhere and took the hunter by total surprise on the morning of Nov. 9. In fact, the 52-year-old ranch hand was quick to admit that he wouldn’t have even been hunting that day if it weren’t for a little girl named Rhiannon.

Rhiannon is the six year-old granddaughter of an old friend Sewell had invited to hunt on the 56-acre tract of property where he lives.

It was the girl’s very first deer hunt and she was sharing a stand with her grandfather, about 100 yards away from Sewell and her father, Aaron Anderson. The two stands were situated in relation to about 20 acres of food plots sown earlier this fall to help carry Sewell’s cattle through the winter.

“I was pretty sore from work the day before and I honestly wouldn’t have even been out there if it weren’t for her,” Sewell said. “I was definitely happy to get this buck. The only thing that would have made it better was if Rhionnan had gotten him. Kids are the future of this sport, but this one may have ruined her. He’s not your everyday buck.”

New Kaufman Co. Record

Not even close.

Sporting 22 scorable points including a matching pair of drop tines, gobs of mass and nearly 60 inches of abnormal growth, Sewell’s free ranging buck has been green scored at 232 4/8 gross and 227 net.

The deer was taped by Kyle Easley, a 15-year veteran Boone and Crockett scorer from McKinney. It is sure to be among the top free ranging bucks taken across Texas this season.

Easley will rescore the rack in January for entry to the B&C All-Time record book following the required mandatory 60-day drying period. The rack will likely undergo a little shrinkage but the official score will still be well above the 195 minimum B&C requires of record book non-typicals.

The Sewell buck also crushes the former Kaufman County record set in 2009 by Texas Parks and Wildlife Department game warden Eric Minter of Kaufman. Minter’s remarkable 31-point archery buck nets 205 2/8 B&C.

Easley knows a thing or two about scoring nasty looking non-typicals. In 2024, he taped 14-year-old Reili Brewer’s record book 29 pointer from Bowie County in northeast Texas. Scoring 239 2/8, the deer ranks as the biggest free ranging deer ever entered in the Texas Big Game Awards program by a youth hunter statewide.

Like the Brewer Buck, Easley called Sewell’s deer a once-in-a-life time whitetail that illustrates what can happen on open range when age meets with good genetics and nutrition and a lucky hunter happens to be in the right place at the right time. While some social media has critics have made comments that the deer could is possibly a high fence escapee, Easley doesn’t believe so.

“I’ve scored dozens of high fence deer over the years and I see no indicators that lead me to believe this is a high fence deer,” Easley said. “I believe this is 100 percent a free range deer. It’s just an incredible animal.”

Easley said he spent roughly 90 minutes scoring the buck. The main frame 10 pointer had nine scorable points on the right antler and 13 on the left. He said the non-typical antlers were fairly easy to interpret with no questionable judgement calls.

“It’s pretty straightforward on what is typical and what isn’t,” Easley said. “I score a lot of deer in Texas, but I will say that if Region 5 (Post Oak Savannah) produces a bigger one than this one I definitely want to see it. This deer is a show stopper, for sure.”

A Complete Surprise

Interestingly, Sewell had no idea the monster buck even existed. The hunter owns several trail cameras, but didn’t bother putting them out on the property this season. He said made several sits around the food plots during opening week and saw a handful of decent bucks, but none that made the grade.

His luck changed about 8 a.m that fateful Sunday morning when the enormous whitetail merged from the wood line and began nibbling at the oats and wheat. The deer was all alone, about 350 yards away, when he and Anderson first spotted him.

“We could see those drops and other big tines pretty plain,” he said. “I knew right away he was unlike anything I had ever seen before.”

The two men took turns looking at the buck through binoculars as it slowly moved their direction. Sewell played it safe and waited about 20 minutes until the deer closed the gap to about 250 yards. That’s when he took a brace, shouldered his 6.5 Creedmore and touched the trigger.

“I wasn’t about to take a shot that I didn’t feel comfortable with,” Sewell said. “Once he got close enough I told Aaron, that’s it, I’m dropping him.”

Sewell said the buck ran about 30 feet and fell. It wasn’t until he approached the buck that he began to realize the just how big the deer really was.

“I’ve been hunting 42 years and killed some decent bucks, but nothing like this one,” Sewell said. “This is like coming across a needle in a haystack. I didn’t even know he was around until I pulled the trigger and posted the picture on Facebook. That’s when I started getting pictures and calls from friends and neighbors who knew the deer was around.”

Close Encounter

One of those neighbors was Kyle Schlee of nearby Ola.

Schlee and his dad were hunting on an 140 tract about 3/4 mile away when they heard Sewell’s shot followed by the telltale “thud” is a solid hit.

“I immediately texted a buddy of mine who hunts about a mile from me to see if he shot,” Schlee said. “When he told me he was still in bed I had a funny feeling somebody had gotten that big buck. Sure nuff, I saw it on Facebook that night. He was a true East Texas giant.”

Schlee was one of several hunters along the King’s Creek bottom who had some history with the buck, and possibly one of its ancestors.

Interestingly, Schlee and another neighbor, Jerry Judlicka, got trail camera pictures in 2016 of a massive non-typical that looked remarkably similar to the Sewell buck, minus the drop tines. To their knowledge, that buck was never killed by a hunter.

“There’s no way to know for certain, but I’d bet that deer was the daddy of Courtland’s buck and probably died of old age,” Schlee said. “I shot a 14-pointer in 2018 that had some of the same traits.”

Schlee says he first became aware of the Sewell buck in early September 2025 when the deer showed up on trail camera. He actually encountered the deer during the Archery Only season on the morning of Oct. 22.

“He chased a doe past me at 25 yards and never let off the gas,” he said. “They jumped a fence, ran around in the brush for about 10 minutes and came right back through the same way. He was a mind blowing buck see.”

Schlee said he knows of several other hunters who got photos of the magnificent deer, some from as 2 1/2 miles away.

“Several people knew about him, but nobody wanted to talk about it in public,” he said.

Rhiannon will be talking about this buck for years.

Matt Williams is a freelance writer based in Nacogdoches. He can be reached by email, mattwillwrite4u@yahoo. com.