Thomas Barr and Jimmy Swogger were stoked. had just driven 14 hours from their homes in Pennsylvania to bowhunt the big buck country of Illinois. It was early November and the rut was ready to rock. One afternoon Darrell Hafford, who runs Rocky Branch Outfitters near the town of Harrisburg, put the strapping, twenty-something archers in treestands along a cut cornfield. Barr, better known as simply "T-Bar," and Swogger had a blast and spotted a few deer. But it was the buck they saw after dark that blew their minds.

At sundown a guide drove in and picked up the hunters. As they cruised slowly out of the field, a deer froze in the truck's headlights. It was a big bodied animal, fat as an Angus, but nobody cared about that. They all just sat and stared at that illuminated rack of bone.

"He was an awesome deer in the 180- to 190 class," recalls T-Bar. "He was perfectly typical and had it all-a 24- to 26-inch spread, good mass and super tine length."

Now I can almost hear you thinking, "Yeah, right, 190 inches." But I should tell you that this was not your typical giddy bowhunter scoring that buck. Both T-Bar and Swogger are professional guides at Paradise Ranch in western Pennsylvania. Their job is to score trophy whitetails on the hoof every day from late summer through hunting season. "He was easily Boone & Crockett, the kind of buck you dream about," says T-Bar. "And he was 30 yards from the truck and less than 200 yards from the stand I'd hunted that afternoon. Jimmy and I were psyched for the rest of our hunt!"

The fall of 1998 was one of the warmest on record in many parts of the country, including Southem Illinois. For the next couple of days the daytime temperatures soared into the 60s and 70s, and it didn't cool off very much after dark. The deer seemed to vanish. Then one night a cold front rolled in, bringing thunderheads with big rains and winds. The front passed and it finally got cold for a day. Every hunter at the lodge was fired up because the rut should kick in and the bucks should move.

That afternoon T-Bar hunted one of those classic Midwestern funnels you read about. It was a narrow strip of timber and brush bordered on either side by a cornfield and a clover plot. A deep creek with steep, nearly vertical banks cut the middle of the cover. His stand was in a tree that swept up and out over the water. An old, crumbling barbed-wire fence ran hard along the creek and beneath the treestand.

"I climbed up and was pumped," recalls T-Bar. "The weather was right and it looked like a great spot to kill a buck." About 3:45 the wind died and the whitetails started moving. T-Bar saw some does and a couple of small bucks flashing through the woods and brush. Then he heard leaves rustling out front of his stand. He stood, shivered and readied his bow for action. "I just knew it was a buck," he says. The crunching got louder and louder and the animal popped out of the cover.

"it was a black and tan puppy, about the size of my hand," says T-Bar. "What the heck was it doing out here? I wondered how it had survived. Earlier that day I had spotted a couple of coyotes, and I saw my first bobcat while hunting. To top it off it was cold and getting colder. The wet leaves and ground had frozen. How could that little guy make it? I couldn't believe what I saw.

The pup kept coming, sniffing the ground and tracking T-Bar to his stand. The dog put his little front paws up on the tree and stared skyward. "I pulled down my face mask and started whining and making puppy noises," says T-Bar. "I wanted him to know he had found a friend. But I tried to be quiet in case a big buck was coming."

The pup hung around T-Bar's tree, ripping up grass and chewing on it. "I could tell the dog was starving," he says, "so I pulled a bologna and cheese sandwich out of my pocket, broke it into little pieces and dropped them on the ground. The pup gobbled them up." A few bits of bread and bologna hit the wire fence, caromed right and rolled down the steep bank. T-Bar was a little concerned that the dog might try to retrieve the food and fall into the creek, but he soon forgot about it. With a full belly, the pup curled up at the foot of the tree and took a nap. T-Bar pulled up his facemask and went back to looking for a big deer.

Buck time came-that still, gray, chilly half-hour before dark. "I was seeing some deer and a few of them were drifting closer, moving out into the fields to feed," says T-Bar. "I knew if I was going to shoot a buck in this funnel, it was going to happen anytime now.

Then the pup woke up and began shuffling around, searching for more food. T-Bar watched him sniff the crumbs closer and closer to the creek bank. Before he could yell, "No!" it was too late. KERPLUNK! The dog fell into the water with a whimper and a splash.

T-Bar had to think fast. If he climbed down from his stand and tried to save the pup, he'd spook some deer--maybe a Pope & Young buck or even the 190-inch Booner he'd spotted in the dark a couple of days earlier. Maybe the dog could make it to shore, maybe not. It took T-Bar about a nanosecond to make up his mind. He frantically unbuckled his safety harness and ran down the tree steps. The pup sunk and bobbed up, sunk and bobbed up. The current was slow, but it carried him steadily downstream. "I guess the dog was too small to swim, and the cold water must have been a shock," says T-Bar. "I knew he'd drown in seconds."

T-Bar couldn't just jump into the creek. The bank was too steep and the muddy water was way too deep. He ran along the bank, looking for a long stick that he could use to reach out and rake in the pup. He found none. He slid halfway down the bank, dug his boots as best he could into the slippery, half-frozen soil and reached down for the whining dog. "it was just like in the movies," he says. "I stretched as far as I could, but I was always a hand's length away from the sinking dog. thought he was a goner.

Then T-Bar remembered the barbed wire fence on the bank. He reached back with one hand, grabbed it and pulled with all his might. The fence creaked and stretched a foot, but how long would it  hold? T-Bar laid out across the creek, stretched his arm as far as he could and plucked the pup out of the water with two fingers.

T-bar took off his coat, dried the shivering dog, wrapped him up and held him close for a while. The pup warmed up, settled down and dozed. T-Bar placed the bundle beneath his tree and climbed back up to hunt the last few minutes before dark.

Back at the lodge that night T-Bar held the puppy and fed him dinner scraps. Everybody listened intently to the rescue story. A hearty cheer rang out when T-Bar told of plucking the dog from the watery grave. Some one said, "You're hunting in Illinois, so you need to give that pup a local name, like Illini." T-Bar liked the idea. He shortened the dog's name to "llly.

T-Bar and Swogger had a couple of days left to hunt. But Illy was in good hands. Some kids kept the pup at the hunting lodge. They fed him and played with him and rolled around on the floor with him. And of course, they got thoroughly attached to him. When it was time to go home, T-Bar told the kids' mom that they could keep the pup if they really wanted to. "But she seemed to sense that the dog was special to me," he says. "She told me to go ahead and take him." Swogger, T-Bar and the dog loaded up and drove all day back to Pennsylvania "it was late when we got home and my wife was asleep," says T-Bar. "I walked in, flipped on the light, threw the pup on the bed and said, 'We're home, meet Illy!' She laughed and hugged the pup, and we've lived happily ever after.

Postscript It's been a year since the rescue and T-Bar still wonders where Illy came from. There were no houses close to where he found the dog. No one reported a missing pup. "Jimmy and l spotted some dogs running loose as we drove to and from our hunting spots, so I guess he could have come from a stray litter," says T-Bar. "Or maybe somebody didn"t want him and dropped him off on a nearby road. All I know is that he sure was lucky. Illy was so small, skinny and scared when I saw him, I don't think he could have made it another night in the woods. "

T-Bar knew the tan and black pup had some beagle in him. A veterinarian confirmed that Illy is full-blooded. Turns out a lot of people show and field trial beagles in western Pennsylvania. "People see me walking Illy, and they notice his nice build, colors and powerful nose," says T-Bar. "I've been offered a lot of money for the dog. But I say no way, this little guy and I have been through a lot"

Illy has grown up to be cool dog with a great personality and a strong sense of loyalty "We have this special bond, " says T-Bar, the bowhunter turned beagle man. "It's almost like Illy knows what happened out there in the woods that afternoon. "