PELSOR — Basel Khalil of North Little Rock is officially a self-proclaimed “Arkie,” by virtue of an 8-point buck he killed Monday in the Ozark National Forest.

He killed it on his first deer hunt, which we arranged in haphazard fashion on very short notice.

It originated by suggestion of a fellow writer at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette who asked where a “newbie” might have a chance at a decent hunt on public land.

My colleague spoke highly of the newbie’s character, and since I’m always looking for new hunting and fishing buddies, I volunteered to take him.

Our plans frayed immediately. The storms that rolled through the state Sunday wrecked our first option, so I offered to take him to a spot I found in the Ozark National Forest while squirrel hunting with my son Ethan four years ago.

It requires a long walk, and you have to carry in your gear, but I believed it offered a decent chance of seeing a deer.

Khalil, a U.S. citizen who emigrated from the Palestinian territories, sells cars for North Point Toyota in North Little Rock. He was adamant about killing a buck because he did not want to kill a doe that might be pregnant.

We waited for the storms to abate before leaving central Arkansas.

A look at the Accuweather radar showed the tail of the front was passing over the Piney Creeks Wildlife Management Area, so we would arrive after the bad weather had passed.

We rolled into a public campground at about 8 p.m. and immediately pitched our tents. After stowing our gear, we retired, and I fell into a deep sleep.

We rose before dawn and wolfed down breakfast, including Arabic coffee spiced with cardamom.

Khalil explained to me the importance of coffee in Arab culture. Coffee spiced with cardamom is a token of deep respect and appreciation, and we believed it portended a really good day.

After a rough ride through the mountains, we reached our jumping off spot shortly after daybreak.

A long walk through the woods brought us to my spot, a big clearing in the woods. Khalil was full of questions about deer and hunting. He asked why I selected a particular spot for us to sit.

“It’s on the highest point, so we can see both ends of the clearing,” I said. “A deer will probably come from the west end. The wind is blowing from the west, so a deer down there won’t smell us. It will also be looking into the sun, so it won’t see us, either.”

“An old sniper’s trick,” Khalil said.

A deer relies on sight, smell and sound, I explained. Anything that triggers any one of those senses will alert a deer, but my experience is they don’t run away unless you trigger at least two senses.

“For example, it will get nervous if it sees you,” I said. “But then it will usually move until it can smell you.

And if it does finally smell you, it’s gone. If it hears you, it’ll try to see what you are, or it will try to scent you.

I think they rely most on scent, though, so you always want to be downwind.”

At the edge of the clearing, the heart-shaped face of a whitetail gleamed in the morning light. It crept out, looking intently in our direction. A look through my Leupold 10x50 binoculars showed it was a young 2x2. I couldn’t grow a third point on either antler no matter how hard I tried. I told Khalil to take my word for it and to not even raise his rifle.

“He’s trying so hard to get our scent,” I said as the deer crept ever closer, testing the wind. It was frustrated that the wind wouldn’t cooperate.

It went back in the woods and came out in a different spot, but the wind was no help there, either. After about 30 minutes, it walked away with a tense, stiff-legged gait.

We spent the afternoon scouting, but the lack of deer sign discouraged us.

There were no rubs, no scrapes and no acorns. It just didn’t feel like we were around deer.

We returned to our spot at 3 p.m., but now the sun was setting over the west end of the clearing, so we couldn’t see well. At about 4 p.m., the 4-point came back out, but departed when another deer arrived. It had a bigger body, but we couldn’t distinguish antlers through the sun. The deer looked at us, munched a little, and walked ever closer in a repetitive pattern. It was only about 40 yards away when we finally saw it clearly. It was a buck, probably a 2-year old, with a decent 8-point rack. The buck put its nose to the ground one last time, and Khalil pulled the trigger on my Remington 700, detonating a 270 WSM cartridge tipped with a 130-grain Federal soft point. He shot it in the neck, and the buck dropped in a heap.

Khalil leapt to his feet and let out a booming series of whoops. He was so happy that he danced all over that clearing. Then he grabbed me and gave me a bear hug.

We strapped the buck and our gear to my well traveled game cart and wheeled the buck back to my truck, where we field dressed it.

“I hope you realize just how special this day has been,” I said.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I figured if we saw anything at all, it would probably be a doe. You can never count on seeing a buck, especially on public land. Anybody can hunt here, and an awful lot of people do. But to come out here on the third day of deer season and have a section of woods all to yourself? That’s really unusual. And then to have a legal buck come out in the last hour of the day?

Brother, you can’t script it any better than that!”

That made Khalil even happier.

“That’s one of the coolest things about living in America, and especially here in Arkansas,” I continued.

“You can go into the woods with a rifle and feed yourself with the meat of a great animal that lives here wild and free. Nobody’s feeding it antibiotics, hormones or steroids. It’s pure. You took that buck’s freedom, but in death, it imparted its freedom to you. It’s a sacred thing, man.”

“I camp and I fish,” Khalil said with a laugh. “My friends say I am honorary redneck. Now, I am officially ‘Arkie!’ ”

With that, Khalil screwed open the lid of his Thermos and poured us a last swallow of his cardamom-laced coffee.

Sports, Pages 33 on 11/18/2012