Photo courtesy of Bruce Bosse.

It was the kind of scream you hear while watching a horror movie.

"It's him! It's Droptine!"

The monster in this particular movie was a nontypical whitetail buck that poked his head into the TV screen, glanced into the camera lens, and was gone in three seconds. Bruce Bosse's girlfriend, Jodi, was so excited to see the buck, the scream was an involuntary celebration at knowing the exceptional deer was back where he belonged.

This story began in 2005 when Jim Bosse, Bruce's father, was driving past one of his southeast North Dakota cornfields. There, in a drowned-out patch of corn, stood a big nontypical buck in full velvet, with a droptine. This was the kind of buck that makes you slam on the brakes.

"Over the rest of the summer we saw the buck quite often, usually in that same spot in the cornfield. We saw him along our shelterbelt quite regularly, too, and got some videotape of him," recalled Bruce, a 30-year-old whitetail fanatic turned bow-hunter.

Then, during the firearms season, Jim, his other son Jason, and hunting buddy Travis Paeper, who happens to be the county sheriff, were cruising down a gravel road when they spotted Droptine standing in a ditch. All three hunters had buck tags in their pockets -- and they all chose to let the big buck live!

"We could tell he was a young deer, and we wanted to give him a chance to grow," Jason said. "It's risky in this country, but if we shot him, we knew he wouldn't get bigger."

In an effort to expand hunting time and increase the challenge, these three hunting buddies had taken up bowhunting in 2004. Along with that, they began managing their property for quality deer, a difficult and sometimes impossible assignment in a prairie state with a long rifle season that starts at the peak of the rut. Still, the new bowhunters shot mostly does, letting the small bucks grow. And they began spending countless hours scouting for deer, planting trees for habitat, hunting for shed antlers, and showing restraint in their deer hunting.

While calling coyotes shortly after the end of the 2005 rifle season, the three hunters saw Droptine one more time. After that, the buck disappeared completely, and throughout the entire 2006 season, no one ever saw Droptine. The Bosses had planted soybeans in the field that held corn in 2005, and that may have influenced where the buck resided. Still, it's a testament to the astonishing ability of a mature whitetail to keep an ultra-low profile, even in open terrain with lots of human activity.

THEN, ON JUNE 10, 2007, Jason was cruising past the same field, which was planted in corn again, and there stood Droptine.

"He was standing in that same general area and the droptine on the left side was already visible," Jason said. "We got serious and put out a Wildlife Eye video camera to see if the buck was going to be hanging out in our shelterbelt again."

On July 7, on footage taken at night, Droptine made his exciting television debut that elicited Jodi's scream. Other evidence of the fruits of these three hunters' restraint showed up as well. Several very good bucks in the 150-class began to appear on videotapes, including more than 14 hours of footage of Droptine.

Excitement was building as the bow season drew closer. Then, around the first week in August, Bruce Bosse made what would turn out to be a serious mistake. He showed the video footage of Droptine to his neighbor.