Mountain Ranch resident Steve Alberts shows off the rack of his state-record buck he shot with his flintlock muzzleloader during the 2004 season in Zone D-5. Photo by Bill Lentz

Mother Lode flora appeared in various shades of gray in the Sierra foothills of Calaveras County as Steve Alberts of Mountain Ranch crawled on hands and knees through a thick patch of white leaf manzanita while cradling his custom .50-caliber flintlock. The self-described "old-school hunter" was trying to reach a spot he'd found during a scouting excursion. Once there he would be able to sit up, use the dense brush for concealment, and overlook a large, oak-covered flat that spread out for some 60 yards below his position.

He spotted a bachelor group of five bucks on the flat during that preseason trip, and two of those were mature bucks -- a tall-tined 5x4 and a wide-racked non-typical 4x3. The bucks were feeding, taking advantage of a tremendous acorn crop. While big blacktail bucks have an uncanny ability to disappear during the general hunting season, the prodigious acorn drop of 2004 would eventually play a key role in Alberts' success.

Alberts began hunting six days after opening day, on Sept. 30, hoping to find the two big bucks. The first three days revealed a few does and two small bucks that he recognized as part of the bachelor group. Visions of those bigger bucks convinced him to come back to the flat for a fourth consecutive day.

The surrounding 20 acres (private land) has rolling terrain dominated by live oaks, manzanita and buck brush (Ceanothus lemonnii), and acorns were still dropping, giving rise to the hope that perhaps the mature bucks were simply feeding at night or early in the mornings.

It was about 6 a.m. on Oct. 4 that Alberts crawled into position. He sat up and laid his flintlock across his lap. An hour later the same two young bucks he had seen earlier in the week came out to feed. Alberts watched them for a half-hour before they moved back into the manzanita to bed down.

"Where are those bigger bucks?" he thought to himself. "Had they vacated the area prior to the season?"

He decided to move to another spot that would allow him to see an edge of the flat he couldn't see from his current position. The edge held thick brush. An hour later he began sneak-crawling through the brush once again, while trying to keep sunlight from reflecting off of his Pennsylvania Mountain-styled smoke pole. It was hopeless. The laminated tiger maple stock, wood from the Allegheny Mountains of West Virginia, and the meticulously stamped brass plate at the butt end just couldn't be hidden, regardless of how slowly he moved.