Tuscola County’s monster “Seney Buck”

The late Mack Seney of Reese had his share of memories, with a couple of them relating to being very lucky. The first relates to a day in 1944 as an infantryman with 35th Infantry Division in France during World War II. The German forces were being pushed back so fast that American soldiers had to hitch rides on any sort of vehicle they could, including on top of tanks, to maintain the front line. Mack was in the back of a truck when it screeched to a stop and everyone was bailing out and heading for cover as an enemy fighter plane began its dive to strafe the column of vehicles.

While he was climbing over the side, Mack’s entrenching tool on his pack snagged a U-bolt on the back of truck, preventing his hasty exit as the enemy plane began machine-gunning its way down the column. Mack can vividly remember bullets hitting all around but not touching him as he looked up at the enemy plane which was so close he could see the German pilot’s face. “It just wasn’t my time”; he said with a pragmatic sigh.

The second “lucky” memory occurred on a cloudy November Saturday in 1948. Mack absolutely loved pheasant hunting, which in the Thumb shortly after World War II, was during Michigan’s memorable pheasant hunting heyday. The deer hunting season in the Thumb had been closed for many years, and if you wanted to hunt deer, you had to head “up north”. Mack was plenty happy with pheasant hunting and really had no interest at all in deer hunting. In 1948 however, deer hunting was reinstated in the Thumb area.

Well, folks, that’s not to say there was a buck hiding behind every tree in those days. The local deer population had reached a point which allowed for a “bucks only” deer season, and deer numbers were not what they are today.

A couple of Mack’s friends, Robert Arndt and Warren Blackmoore finally convinced him to join them on a deer hunt along the Cass River. Mack purchased his first ever deer license and a box of buckshot for his 16ga. double barrel shotgun, because buckshot was all that was allowed at that time in the newly established “Shotgun Zone”.

There was no rush in heading to the hunting spot that Saturday morning, as their plan was to work together through the brush and trees along the Cass River bottomlands and jump up a buck. They all rode in Mack’s new Plymouth, and parked at Enos Park along M-46, where they began their hunt around 10:00 am.

They had covered quite some distance along the Cass River, when Mack, who was closest to the riverbank, spotted a large deer on the other side headed directly for them, and coming fast. Whether the deer had been spooked by another hunter or wanted to be someplace else in a hurry due to the rut, was not known for sure. As it got closer, Mack knew it was a buck, but assumed due to a lot of headgear protruding above the buck’s head, it had obviously snarled some brush on its antlers. The deer hit the river at a gallop and came splashing right across and directly at Mack.

Everything happened fast, as the large deer clambered up the riverbank with water dripping off and continued its fast pace. A lot of things no doubt fell into place here for Mack, his training as an infantryman, as well his wing shooting skill on rooster pheasants as he automatically shouldered the double-barrel 16ga, flicked the safety off as he lined up on the fast-incoming buck’s chest, and simultaneously fired both barrels. The range was just under 20 yards, which is an ideal application for buckshot. The very large and obviously mortally hit deer ran past Mack, and his two hunting companions then unleashed a volley of 7 more shots to bring the big deer down for the count.

It wasn’t until Mack approached the buck that he realized that the “brush” tangled up on its head was in fact all antlers with an amazing array of antler points, 27 of them to be exact, including a pair of large drop-tines. The buck was large-bodied as well, and they would discover later that it weighed 248 pounds after being field dressed. With a 1 ½ mile drag ahead of them, it would take the trio of hunters a sweaty 2 hours to get the buck out to where it could be reached with the car. According to Mack, the long drop-tines made great handles for dragging the big buck out.

Once they got to the car came the dilemma as to where to put the buck. There was no way it would fit in the trunk, so it was strapped over the passenger-side front fender, with its head tied to the front bumper. When the hunters arrived in Vassar, the sight of the large buck strapped to the front of the car was definitely a traffic stopper. A newspaper photo taken that day, shows the three happy hunters standing behind a very large bodied and heavily antlered buck tied across the front of the vehicle.

Mack was told of a big buck contest being held at the Smith Hardware Store in Saginaw, and he headed there to place his deer on the “buck-pole”. Mack’s 27-point buck won the contest hands down, with $25 in merchandise picked out at the hardware store being first prize, and $25 in 1948 was a nice sum of money. Mack picked out a blow-torch as one of the items, which he would keep in his garage for the remainder of his days.

When the buck was later hanging in Mack’s barn near Reese, word of the buck had gotten out, and visitors from all around came to see the amazing deer. After the head was mounted, Mack’s wife wasn’t too thrilled about having a deer staring at her, and it would end up being in Krick’s Bar (owned by her family members) which used to be at the west side of Reese, where the mounted head remained for almost 40 years.

In the 1980’s, Mack had the buck remounted with a new cape, and with the commercial interest in large whitetail racks that began in that timeframe, he had been offered from two to ten thousand dollars for it, but it was a family heirloom that was not for sale. The buck would go on display in Reese at Hill’s Trophies Unlimited Taxidermy, which is owned and operated by Mack’s grandson, Matt Hill.

Despite his good fortune on bagging a trophy buck of a lifetime, Mack’s outdoor passion would remain to be pheasant hunting, and he would never go deer hunting again.

However, he would always remember those lucky moments in life, from a German pilot who completely missed with multiple bullets while strafing the truck Mack was temporarily stuck on, to an enormous whitetail buck that came splashing across the Cass River and climbing up the nearby riverbank as if it were fate.

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Tom Lounsbury

Tom Lounsbury has been an outdoor writer and photographer for more
than 40 years and has had his weekly radio show, “Tom Lounsbury
Outdoors” for more than 20 years. Tom grew up on a farm in
Michigan’s Thumb, and it is where his first outdoor adventures began
as a kid accompanying visiting pheasant hunters into the field during
the “pheasant hunting heyday” of the 1950’s and 1960’s. It is a passion
he still has to this day and being the 4 th generation to own the family
farm, he has put most of it into conservation programs with a focus on
wild pheasants, which in turn helps all wildlife.
Being an outdoor communicator, Tom appreciates all the outdoor
adventures he experiences in different places, and especially the
people he meets in which to share them.