Making Your Own Adventure:

Lanny's Close Encounter
And how "Buster" got his name

By Lanny Benoit

When you talk to Lanny Benoit about the 2007 deer hunting season, it isn’t the 200+ pound bucks the Benoit Brothers shot which he begins the conversation by talking about (including two that he personally took care of), or his bad knee which hampered him all season, or the new Suburban they used this year. More than anything, what excited Lanny the most about 2007 was that the Benoit Brothers were able to tutor a couple of hunters who shot 200 pounders on their own, including one guy who had never shot a buck before after years of hunting (we’ll be bringing you those stories in another issue). After a bit of prodding though, Lanny did confess they had quite a few other good adventures, including a run-in with a Maine buck during muzzleloader season which he won’t be forgetting about any time soon.

Lanny’s Close Encounter

For much of the 2007 hunting season, Lanny had been hindered by a bad knee and unable to cover the ground he usually does. During the Maine muzzleloader season, he and Shane had spent most of their time working with a couple of hunters who all had opportunities at good bucks. On one morning in particular, the group was driving down the road and found where a big buck had crossed. One of the hunters took the track, and was off on his own adventure. A ways further down the road, the Benoits found another, different, big buck track, which their other hunter took. This left Shane and Lanny alone in the Suburban.

“Now all I need is to find one,” joked Lanny, and it wasn’t long after the words left his mouth that his wish came true, and there was a big buck track in the road heading in the other direction.

“I looked at the track and saw there was a softwood knob up on the hill. I told Shane he was either going to be up on that knob or over in the cutting.” Lanny decided to find out which one it would be, bad knee and all.

It turned out the deer went up onto the knob. “I wasn’t in the woods very long, maybe half an hour or so, and I found where he had bedded down. Then I found some droppings and they were still steaming, so I knew he was right there,” he said.

“It was pretty thick up on the knob and I knew the deer had heard me, so I saw a rock I thought I would sit on for a while. I thought he might either get curious and come back to see what made the noise, or run off in the other direction—they are a curious animal,” he said.

“After a couple of minutes I heard crunching in the snow. I could see some flashes of brown coming through the trees and I made up my mind if he had any kind of horns he was going to get it,” he said.

“Finally, I saw his head and said to myself ‘yup, he’s getting it.’”

By this time the buck was a mere 12-15 feet away from Lanny, and when the deer turned to look at him the muzzleloader went to work. When the smoke cleared, Lanny found the deer dead in its tracks. “He was so close he had powder burns on him,” he said.

“I didn’t weigh him,” said Lanny. “A couple of guys asked me what he weighed and I don’t like to guess so I told him I thought he was probably between 190 and 210 and that they could pick. I don’t think they knew what to make of that,” joked Lanny with a chuckle.

“Johny Newell and Kevin Weir were mighty helpful and dragged the deer out for me,” said Lanny. “I really want to thank them for that.”

Certainly it wasn’t Lanny’s biggest buck, but it was pretty memorable for a hunter on one leg with a muzzleloader.

Buster

In the past it was Casper. Then the Gray Ghost came along. Benoit followers will of course know we are talking about the names of various Suburbans the brothers have used over the years. This year it was time to break a new one in, the only thing that was missing on it was a name.

“We had it up in Ontario and I was standing next to it with a doctor friend--Robert Kenny. He made a comment about it and asked what we called it. I told him we didn’t have a name for it yet,” said Lanny.

“He stood back and looked it up and down and stared at it for a minute. ‘It looks like a Buster to me,’ he said.”

“That’s it, we’ll call it Buster!” responded Benoit. “Then we went and loaded a big 235 pound eight-pointer Landon had shot into it and broke it in,” said Lanny. By the time the season was over, the Suburban had handled six whitetails over 200 pounds, and the name had stuck.

The Benoit Brothers 2008 calendar, videos, and books are available, on their website at Benoitsbigbucks.com or by calling 1-888-Benoits. The will be appearing at the Yankee Classic on January 18-20, as well as other shows throughout the region.