The biggest deer shot by 88-year-old Alvin Ance may have been the one that required the least work.
Ance, a member of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, may have shot more bucks in Michigan than any other hunter. He’s been putting venison on the table for nearly three-fourths of a century.
“I’ve gotten at least one buck every year,” Ance said.
That string of success was about to be broken on Jan. 7 when he and a group of fellow Tribal members were returning from a hunting trip empty handed. The Tribal hunting season ended that day. GTB members are allowed to hunt public lands as well as private property with permission from the landowner.
The group passed a field with five does and the biggest buck Ance had ever seen. They drove on to a farmhouse seeking permission to hunt the property.
“We asked and he said, ‘Kill them all.’ I went back and shot the best buck of my life. That was in Wexford County, just south of the Benzie County line,” Ance said.
The deer is being mounted by a Benzie County taxidermist. The nine-point will score more than 150 points on the Boone and Crocket scale and weighed more than 250 pounds field dressed.
How much more will never be known.
“I once shot a 10-point that scored 138 and it dressed out at 220 pounds. But this one here, they had a scale that went to 250 pounds, but it couldn’t weigh the deer. It was too heavy,” he said.
The story is just another in the book of Alvin Ance, a biggerthan- life legend in Peshawbestown and Leelanau County. He started alongside Art Korson, Louis Lingaur, Bruce Price and his brother Charlie Ance on the 1953 St. Mary basketball team that won 21 straight. He was fast-friends with Skip and Arthur Duhamel, both deceased, who are credited with important roles in establishing Tribal fishing rights. And he killed a moose while hunting in Canada that most people couldn’t see.
“The bull was across the lake from our cabin. From a range finder it was 625 yards, and I dropped it right there,” Ance said.
There are more stories. Ance shot a running buck at 454 yards. “I killed it with one shot.”
He made $50 from five doubters of his marksmanship through the open sights of a .22 rifle. Nearby, sap oozed from the scar left by a limb Ance had cut from a tree.
“I said, ‘See that hornet? I can stand right here and shoot it. ‘ They bet me $5, and I shot and killed it. While we were talking another hornet landed on that sap. They said, ‘Hey, we could make our money back.’ I shot that one, and I made $10 from each. Then two hornets landed and I said, ‘Which one you want me to shoot, the right one or the one on the left.’
“They said, ‘We’re not going to bet,’” Ance said.
He’s never been lost in the woods and never carried a compass. Those two scenarios don’t usually go together.
Ance was born in Leland Township in a house on Horn Road just east of Eagle Highway. He bought a 1 1/2-acre lot in 1960 in northern Suttons Bay Township, then started saving money earned through his job at Frigid Foods and hand-splitting firewood that he sold.
“I said that I was going to keep putting money away so that when I build my house, I won’t have to borrow any money. I just pretended that I was paying rent,” Ance said.
Now that house is filled with trophy deer mounts, including six 10-points. A short drive away awaits hunting land he leases and a blind his two daughters had built for his use.
Though he’s lived a vibrant life, the difficulties are mounting for Ance. His wife, Carol, suffered a series of strokes and requires his attention. He managed to deer hunt only six times during a Tribal season that starts in early September and extends into January.
And he’s living with Parkinson’s Disease, which slows muscle movement and causes tremors.
Yet, his aim was spot-on at 120 yards on his last trophy.
“I’ve been hunting 74 years and that’s the biggest one,” Ance said, his memory crisp.
