Two women’s years-long saga of bringing down Paladin

ALBANY — Stereotypes can be misleading, and Debbie Gates Riles, and her neighbor Nuni Ford are living proof.

The saga of their hunt for the deer that would become known as “Wide Spread Eight” reinforces the archaeological evidence found at the 9,000-year-old burial site in the Andes Mountains of a female hunter. The discovery shattered the long-held stereotypical view of hunter-gatherer societies portraying the men as the hunters and the women the gatherers.

Riles’ hunt for Wide Spread Eight (WS8) began in 2020 when he first showed up on the southeastern corner of her property bordering the Flint River. Seeing the deer and then documenting his movements with game cameras led Riles to let him grow.

“We knew he was young and had great potential, so we decided to let him go and see what he would turn into,” Riles said.

However, that would prove to be a greater challenge than she initially anticipated.

During the 2021 season, Gates wouldn’t actually see the deer, although he would show up on game cameras scattered across the property. Resulting photos led Riles to believe that during the rut, he broke off one side of his rack fighting. She was actually pleased with this, hoping that no one would shoot a deer with only half of his rack.

In 2022, WS8 did not make an appearance anywhere on the property during the early season.

“Nuni was helping me, and she set up a camera on a scrape in a hardwood bottom on the northwest end of the property in October,” Riles said. “We found him again, and boy did he look good. He had put on a lot of mass and an additional point. That area ended up being quite the honey hole; I ended up shooting an incredible 11-point around Christmas that year. And I never laid eyes on this buck during the 2022 season.”

The 2023 season started off like 2022, except WS8 wasn’t even showing up on any of the cameras on the property.

“I was worried he might be gone,” Riles said.

Every time she heard a shot fired near one of his previous haunts, she was afraid that someone else had killed him. It wasn’t until Oct. 21, that WS8 made a photographic appearance when Ford set up a camera on a scrape in an area he had frequented the previous year. Only now he was sporting an 11-point rack with even more mass.

“I cried with joy and was so thankful he got another year to grow,” Riles said.

Now the chess match of trying to be at the same place at the same time on the same day began in earnest, according to Riles.

“He was all I could think about and the only buck I was after,” she said. “We moved cameras around, and it took a couple of weeks to figure out his area and favorite spot.”

However, the deer was always a step ahead of Gates. But in the last week of November the weather turned cold, and WS8 was following does.

“We had him on the camera at 5:30 p.m. at a place we called the Box Stand,” Riles said. “I needed a west wind to sit there.”

Nov. 29 rolled around with a steady west wind, and Riles was in the stand. Unfortunately, she believes he smelled her and eased through only to show up on a camera on the southern end of the property.

After sitting in the stand for eight hours a day, two days in a row, many hunters might throw in the towel. However, on the next morning Ford and Riles decided to move the stand from its site over the scrape to the southwest side of the field. At 3:15 p.m. Riles was on stand at the new location in time to observe turkeys feeding throughout the adjacent field. At 4:30 p.m. a buck she had been following on the game cameras came into the field.

“Then I see a big-bodied deer moving through the brush, and it looks like a buck but I cant get a good look at the rack,” she said. “He has a doe beside him, and it looks like the one that has been with WS8 for the last few days when the camera catches them. At 5:44 p.m., buck fever kicks in when I glass him and get a side view of his rack. Then he turns his head just enough, and I see it’s WS8! I react by putting the crosshairs of my scope on his shoulder, take a deep breath, safety off, and squeeze the trigger. He mule kicks and falls over, gets up and goes toward the woods. He’s going down. He makes it to the woods, and I call to Nuni, ‘I shot him!’ Nuni picked me up at the Old Gate. I was shaking and we decided to wait an hour before looking for him.

“After a nerve-racking hour, we head back. Just the two of us with our flashlights, a 12-gauge shotgun and buckshot. We go to where he first crashed down. No blood. We creep into the woods, tracking. I’m on one trail, she’s on another. Slow and easy we move forward and minutes pass when I hear Nuni yell, ‘Debbie Gates Riles, come get your boy!’ I yell back asking, is it him?”

Turns out it was.

“He’s wide, yes,” Ford responded. Riles recounts in a note thanking Ford, “The celebration begins with two girls in the woods, yelling, praising God, tears of joy and big hugs. Girl Power rules, once again! The plan came together, just at the right time. Debbie Nuni, a great mature WS8, and God! I thank you for your knowledge, dedication, determination and mostly, friendship. Love you Numi McDavid Ford, — Ms. Debbie.”

Following the hunt, Wide Spread Eight got a new name in light of the fact he had transformed into an 11-pointer with mass and character. He is now known as Paladin, a name that holds a great deal of significance for Riles for multiple reasons.

“I named him Paladin because he was a Great Knight and warrior,” she said. “I mean, I hunted him for so long and only saw him with my own eyes once, other than on the cameras.”

The name also has a special meaning that transcends deer hunting, crossing over into the rarefied world of Field Trial championships. Riles’ genesis as a hunter can be traced back to being the third generation of a family that is truly Field Trial Royalty. Her father, John Rex Gates, won more field trial championships than anyone else, and one of the most notable dogs he handled was Champion Paladin’s Royal Flush. Her brother Robin carried that torch forward for another generation while Debbie developed her skills as a hunter.

Ironically, Riles and her husband Britt now own and live on the property where she killed her first deer 48 years before harvesting Paladin. At that time, her father leased the property to run and train his bird dogs. Today, the mounts of her first deer and Paladin are mounted on the same wall of their riverside home where the hunting tradition lives on … now, their grandchildren enjoy the hunt.

Special Photo: Debbie Gates Riles