Patient 9-year-old bags career buck

Throughout the summer and into the early fall, the biggest celebrities in northwestern Powhatan County were a bruin and a buck. In still-rural communities like Pine Tree and Trenholm, the pair was as well known as any Hollywood A-List couple.

"A few people had set up cameras in the woods up there to see the bear, and they had," said Amy Potter, a lifelong Powhatan resident.

Her son William said he "heard [the bear] was 800 pounds."

As for the buck, a giant 10-pointer, Phillip Fore said every evening around dusk since July half a dozen trucks would park at the corner of Cartersville and Trenholm roads and watch it emerge from the woods to munch on soybeans.

"The amazing thing is that a deer that size came out like that," Fore said. "Most deer aren't that predictable."

One week into hunting season -- archery season for bear and deer started Oct. 3 -- it's now Fore and 9-year-old William Potter who are the local celebrities. Potter felled the deer while hunting with his grandfather Sept. 26, the newly instituted Youth Deer Hunting Day. Fore took the bear, which he estimated at 400 pounds, a week later on the opening day of bow season.

For each, it was day of exploits that will echo through the community for a long time.

It started with Potter, his grandfather, Fred Boatwright, and the buck. As Fore said, every hunter in the area knew about this whitetail. It wasn't particularly tall, but it was thick (168 pounds) and its rack was exceptionally wide (25-inch outside spread).

"There was 100 people watching that deer since July," Fore said.

Luckily for Potter, he had the jump on the adult hunters in the county because of the youth day. His mother told me how it happened.

William and his grandfather set up in a tent in a hardwood stand next to the bean field that Saturday at 3 p.m. It was raining and cold. About 6:30, two four-point bucks stepped out of the woods and into the field. With night coming, Boatwright urged his grandson to take aim at one.

William had never harvested a deer before, but he held off.

"William was pretty determined that he was going to get that big deer," Amy said. "He was determined that his first buck would be a 10-pointer, which is pretty hilarious because normally that doesn't happen."

William had heard others in his grandfather's Pine Tree Hunt Club talk about passing up smaller deer, and he wasn't about to break tradition on account of his age.

So he waited.

A few minutes later, like clockwork, the 10-pointer trotted into the field. William pulled the trigger of his .243 rifle once, the deer stood there, so he pulled it again.

The deer charged into the woods, and because of the rain and the dark, no one could find it. They decided to come back the next morning.

"I know I hit it," William told his mom that night.

The next day, he was proved right. Family friend Ricky Williams found the deer 100 yards from where William shot it the day before. Because it was the hunt club's work day, dozens of members were there to congratulate the 9-year-old on the deer of a lifetime.

Said Fore, "I told him, 'Man, you never have to hunt again.' He just smiled."

Fore told the young hunter that the following weekend, as William and dozens of others stood around a local store gaping at the immense black bear Fore had harvested earlier in the day, the bear they had all been hearing about.

Fore and buddy Wesley Redford climbed their tree stands at dawn that morning in a hardwood patch next to a swamp and a thicket on Five Forks Hunt Club land. There were acorns on the ground, and the thicket offered perfect bedding for deer or bear.

At 7:50 a.m., Fore "heard something big." At 40 yards, he realized it wasn't a deer but a bear. It was walking right toward his tree.

"A bear's not like a deer," he said. "A deer, you can grunt and stop one. A bear, if you make a sound, he's probably going to bolt, especially when they're that close."

Fore took the shot with his compound bow at 27 yards; the bear took off, and Fore waited, heart pounding. Best not to chase a wounded bear into the thicket with just a bow and arrow, he thought. An hour, 40 minutes later, he and Redford went into the brush after it. It took them the rest of the morning to get it out, but when they did, Fore became the talk of the area.

"There must have been 200 people at the [game check station]," Fore said.

The 55-year old has hunted all over North America, but this hunt will stay with him, he said, because, "It's Virginia. It's Powhatan. We don't have many bears here."

No they don't. It turns out his was almost certainly the first bear killed with archery tackle in the county.

And, like William Potter's first deer the week before, it will live on not just as hamburgers and hearty winter stew, but in the collective memory of a community where celebrities often walk on all fours.

Contact Andy Thompson at (804) 649-6579 or