About three weeks ago on an evening after work, Rich Kosiorek was bow hunting on some private land near Lake Prince in Suffolk.

He had hunted in that area for about six years, admittedly with, &uot;not a lot of luck.&uot;

&uot;It was just before dark, and it was getting dark a little earlier than usual because a big storm was coming in,&uot; said Kosiorek.

It was the evening of Nov. 7 to be exact.

Kosiorek was about to come down out of his stand and call it a night when, &uot;(the buck) tip-toed out of the woods, gosh, only about 20 yards, he was right on me.&uot;

&uot;I knew I got a hit,&uot; Kosiorek described.

Kosiorek followed the buck out into an open soybean field and got his first good look at him.

&uot;What the heck is that, a moose,&uot; Kosiorek said of the 25-point buck that he saw he had hit.

He said he had been talking with some people who live around that area, and they told him they had seen something that looked at least as big as a moose.

&uot;It was a good thing it was almost dark.

If I had really known how big he was, I might have been shaking and missed.&uot;

Kosiorek tracked the buck for a couple hours as a downpour began.

He then lost the buck’s track near the lake and had to go home, wondering if he had let the huge once-in-a-lifetime buck get away for good.

&uot;I couldn’t sleep,&uot; said Kosiorek who is the facility director at Sentara Obici’s physical therapy center at the YMCA.

&uot;The next day at lunch I went back out and I was able to find him down near the lake.&uot;

His physical therapy career has taken him all around the country, meaning Kosiorek estimates he’s hunted in about 20 different states.

Even with that experience, &uot;I’d never seen anything this big.

&uot;Plus the webbing, the thickness and the weight of the rack was like nothing I’d ever seen before,&uot; he said.

The 25-buck is now at Blackwater Taxidermy and the folks there told Kosiorek this was at least one of the, if not the, biggest bucks they had seen.

They also told him he should enter it in next September’s state outdoors show.

&uot;They (the taxidermists) said they were going to try to speed it up to make sure it’s ready to be shown in September,&uot; said Kosiorek.