PRINCETON, W.Va. — Word travels fast in the hills. It didn’t take long for Mercer County resident Chad Scyphers to become an instant celebrity this week when he finished a two year quest to kill a gigantic buck.
“People have been calling me from all over the place,” he laughed. “I guess that goes with the territory.”
Scyphers killed the 12 point monster on November 18 while hunting on public land in McDowell County. When MetroNews finally caught up with him, he was on a mountaintop scouting.
“I was scouting a little, thought maybe next year I’d try to top that one,” said Scyphers. “It’s a 12 pointer. Really it’s a 10 point frame with a couple of kickers on it.”
The crew at Mountain Heritage Outdoors and Taxidermy in Princeton, where Chad works, was as excited as Chad, or maybe more excited. The word spread rapidly on social media.
“We would like to congratulate our employee Chad Scyphers on his harvest of a once in a lifetime West Virginia buck after a 2 year quest. Chad killed this deer with a bow on 11/18/14 in McDowell County, West Virginia on public ground. We rough scored this deer at 196 5/8. This deer has less than 10″ of deductions which we feel should easily make it the new West Virginia State record typical bow kill.” said the post on the company’s Facebook page.
The standing record for a typical bow kill in West Virginia is 175 6/8 killed by Mark Lester in 1998 in Logan County. Chad isn’t celebrating just yet. He’s not talking either.
“I’m going to wait before I tell the story,” he said. “I’d hate to make a big to do about it and then it turn out not to be the record.”
The buck cannot be officially scored under the Pope and Young scoring system until it has dried for 60 days, which would make it seasoned to score on January 17.
“I’ll wait until then and then I’ll tell you all about it,” said Scyphers. “I gave you a little tease there.”
Record or not, the buck has everybody’s attention and can already be seen as one of the biggest bucks ever killed in West Virginia. The story has been two years in the making. Honoring Chad’s wish to wait another 60 days won’t do any harm.