How one young man used his late father’s bow and SPYPOINT cameras to take down a record-setting buck.
Article by Logan Metesh
“With him being gone, it’s been a difficult hunting season.”
Cameron Parham, a 23-year-old bowhunter from Virginia, lost his father to brain cancer back in April. His father was the one that introduced Cameron and his brother to hunting, so facing a season without him was tough. To make it a little easier, Cameron took to the woods with his father’s Mathews bow this season.
Hunting on a 55-acre plot of private ground, Cameron focused on a 20-acre section of the woods where he knew there was good deer movement. It was there that he deployed seven SPYPOINT cameras to get excellent coverage of the area. All told, he’s got 17 SPYPOINT cameras - a mix of LM2 and FLEX-M models.
“With this spread [of cameras], I have been able to see deer in multiple spots on the same property to see how they're moving and where they tend to be at what times,” noted Cameron.
There were plenty of deer around, but there was one buck in particular that stood out. The whitetail that Cameron nicknamed “Double Deuce” was a bit camera shy. “He was only caught on camera on two occasions by me, twice by two other neighboring properties, and once by another over a mile from where he was killed,” he said.
Sitting in his stand reading, Cameron heard the crack of a stick nearby. Looking around, he spotted a nice eight-point buck eating acorns at 55 yards. As the buck moved closer, Cameron was left with a difficult decision: take the shot on this buck or wait and see if Double Deuce showed up.
“I heard another crunch and out came Double Deuce, my target buck.” Everything moved quickly - especially Double Deuce - and Cameron had to pull himself together, calm down, and make the shot at just 16 yards all in a matter of seconds.
The arrow from his father’s Mathews bow hit its mark. Cameron made some phone calls to relay what had transpired and then made his way out of the woods. “It hurt my heart to not be able to call him first and celebrate it with him.” Still, Cameron said he knew his father was there when he drew back his father’s bow while seated in one of his favorite stands.
Wade and Kayla, Cameron’s brother and sister-in-law, showed up with their friend Jut, who is a licensed drone pilot and operates a deer recovery business in Virginia. With Jut’s help, they were able to locate Double Deuce just 65 yards from where Cameron made his shot.
“When I got my hands on him, he seemed to have grown from the pictures,” Cameron said. “We believed he had 14 points, but he turned out to have 20. We had believed he was a 170 to 180-inch deer and he turned out to be over 200-inches.”
After sitting in the woods on 18 different occasions during bow season, an arrow from his father’s bow helped him pull off a truly remarkable hunt. “I never imagined I would have the opportunity to kill a buck of this stature,” he said.
To put it mildly, this deer was a non-typical giant. Using the BTR scoring system, Double Deuce measured 202 4/8”. That earns him a spot in the Buckmasters record book as the fifth largest bow kill in Virginia. “He was one-eighth of an inch from the number four spot,” said Cameron.
Without proof of Double Deuce’s existence in the area thanks to his SPYPOINT cameras, Cameron might not have passed on that eight-point buck. Alas, that’s not how things were meant to play out.
“When this deer showed up, I immediately felt it in my heart that God and my Dad sent him to me,” said Cameron.
