The inspiration behind one of my favorite novel characters

If you've read my book, Secrets of the Sandhills, then you'll smile when you see the name, Percy (Whitty) Whitlock. Percy is the Georgia hunter who flies out west for a guided hunt on the Blue Diamond ranch. He turns out to be as loveable as the real-life "Whitty", named Frank Browning.

My only encounter with Frank was on a deer hunt in the eastern Sandhills twenty-some years ago. I was fortunate enough to be assigned his guide on the four-day hunt. I couldn't decide whether this guy looked more like Brad Paisley or Jeff Gordon. He was silent as we drove through the predawn fog to our destination on the Cedar River opening morning. We quietly set a pop-up blind on a hill above the river and sat back, waiting for the sun to come up and burn the fog away. After what seemed like hours, we could finally see the couple hundred yards to the river.

"There's a deer," Frank hissed. "It's a buck...a big buck! Can Ah shoot im?"

I watched the deer walk upriver through my binoculars. "No, it's just a two year old," I replied. "We'll wait for something bigger."

"That's the biggest buck Ah've ever seen," Frank said with a hint of remorse.

His statement made me recall what my hunter from the previous year, who also happened to be from Georgia, said when I asked why it took so long to shoot the deer that I was pointing at. He said that he thought it was an elk.

"We'll see bigger," I said.

That afternoon Frank got his opportunity to shoot a big buck. It was a very narrow opportunity though. The buck was at a full-out sprint, giving Frank about five seconds to aim and fire before the deer disappeared over a rise. The bullet missed and Frank was heart broken. "If Ah go home now without shootin a buck, Ah'm gonna throw my rifle out the airplane window," he lamented.

That evening, and the next three, Frank had the entire supper table in uncontrollable laughter as he recounted the day's hunt. On the final afternoon Frank got his deer. The stories that night were, as they say down south, "better'n boilt peanuts."

Thank you, Frank, for the inspiration you gave me, and I'm pretty sure, everyone else that you come in contact with!