North American Whitetail » Deer of the Day

My hunt for Bud began in August of 2008. I was clicking through some trail camera pictures and an incredible young buck popped up. I immediately said, “Oh, buddy,” hence the name Bud. This was a phenomenal 2-year-old buck. He had a 6×5 typical frame with some forks and stickers and had great mass. With all the junk he had as a 2-year-old, I felt like he would eventually grow into a giant non-typical. The problem was that he was only a 2-year-old and I knew that it would be three long years before I would hunt him.

On my farm, I’ve decided that genetically superior bucks will get the pass until they are 5 1/2 years old, and Bud definitely fit that category. The big question was whether he would still be around in three years. I vowed to do everything I could to make my farm the best it could be for him and to also harvest the mature bucks that shared his core area. I felt like if I could harvest the dominant buck in his area every year, he would be less likely to stay on my farm.

Fortunately, Bud lived in the heart of my 470-acre farm, so I felt like he had a decent chance of surviving several hunting seasons. I got hundreds of trail camera pictures of him that year and also found his shed antlers in the spring, so I knew he survived the 2008 season. I couldn’t wait to see what he turned into as a 3-year-old.

In August of 2009, I was pleasantly surprised when I started running cameras again. Bud had blown up into an awesome 3-year-old that would easily score in the mid-160s. The interesting thing was that he was only a 5×5 this year and was a clean typical. It seemed odd that he lost a point and all his kickers. During the 2009 season, I had the pleasure of seeing and passing Bud on numerous occasions. My heart would always skip a beat as soon as I saw him. I was also fortunate in 2009 because I was able to harvest two different 5 1/2-year-old bucks that lived in the same area as Bud. Things were shaping up, but I still had two years to wait.

In 2010 when I started running cameras, I immediately got pictures of Bud right where I expected. It was amazing how many inches he had put on from 3 to 4 years old. He had turned into a giant 6×5, and I estimated he would score in the mid-180s.

The 2010 archery season was a blast! I passed Bud twice and saw him numerous times. I’ll never forget the look on my cameraman Dan Johnson’s face when Bud walked by the first time and I passed him. He thought I was crazy! I was also fortunate to harvest two additional 5 1/2- year-old bucks that year, including one that lived right in Bud’s core area. I knew by killing that buck, Bud would definitely be in his core area the following year.

After the 2010 season, I couldn’t wait to see what Bud turned into as a 5-year-old. If he put on another 20 inches like he’d done the previous year, I felt like he had a chance to push the 200-inch mark. I also thought it would be neat to document his antler growth the entire growing season, so I made sure my Whitetail Institute 30-06 mineral sites were replenished in early spring and started running a camera on the one I expected Bud to show up on. I started getting pictures of him in mid-April, but I couldn’t really tell much from them. By mid-June he was really putting on some inches and some mass, but it only looked like he was going to be a 5×5.

It was obvious he was going to be a giant though, so I was very excited. In early July, I was clicking through more pictures and was shocked to see how much Bud had grown in two weeks. He now had G5s on both sides and was developing a few kickers. There was no doubt at this point that he was developing into a world-class buck. Now I just had to wait until archery season to hunt him!

During the months of July, August, and September I was busy planting food plots. I planted a total of around seven acres of food plots during that time. My food plots were broken up into brassica blends, cereal grain blends and Imperial Whitetail Clover. The problem was that we had a severe drought in southeast Iowa last summer and the plots didn’t grow as well as normal.

Once the food plots were planted, I had to focus on getting ready for the hunt. Fortunately Bud lived right in the middle of my farm in an area that is fairly easy to hunt. I also had the benefit of patterning him over the past three years, so I had several Lone Wolf stands in place well before the season that I thought I could kill him from. The only missing link was that I had a strategic spot where I needed a Banks Blind. There were no trees to hunt this particular spot and I needed a place to hunt his core area on rainy days. One of the drawbacks to filming my hunts is that I usually have to sit at home on rainy days. The Banks Blind would protect the camera equipment and allow me to keep hunting Bud even if it rained.

In early September, I ordered a Whitetail Properties Edition four-man Banks Blind. The next day I placed it adjacent to a point of timber in between two food plots that Bud frequented. I also placed a Reconyx trail camera facing the blind (about 25 yards away) to monitor the deer activity and to see if Bud was comfortable with the blind being there. Fortunately, within a week, I started getting pictures of Bud walking between the blind and the camera!

Now I just had to wait for my cameraman to arrive on October 28 to start hunting. That was a long wait! Some long-distance scouting and Reconyx pictures during the last few days of October indicated that Bud was still in his core area and was walking by several of my stands on a regular basis. It looked like I was going to have a short hunt. Boy was I wrong!

I started hunting Bud on October 29 and saw him the first two or three times we sat. Then he just disappeared. It wasn’t until November 2 or 3 that I realized he was already with does and had moved into a different part of the farm that is practically unhuntable. During the next two weeks, the only times that I saw Bud were from my house with a spotting scope about half a mile from his core area. In each case, he was with a doe.

I kept hunting him in his core area because I knew he would eventually return, but it was apparent that he was breeding does in a different area and probably wouldn’t be back in his core area until the post-rut.

On November 16, Dan had to leave and I started hunting without a cameraman. At this point, after hunting non-stop for over two weeks, I was worn out. I had seen and passed some nice bucks, but I really had my heart set on Bud. I continued to grind it out and finally saw him back in his core area the morning of November 19. I was set up in a small block of thick timber that he liked to bed in. At about 9 a.m., Bud ran into a food plot on the south side of the timber, looked around for does, and took off into the timber. He was on a mission to find his next doe!

I was on pins and needles thinking he would exit the timber right under the stand I was in. He always used the same trail when entering or exiting the west side of this timber. After a couple of hours without spotting him, I decided that he had bedded down and probably wouldn’t get up until mid-afternoon.

The wind was supposed to shift that afternoon and would be wrong for the stand I was in, so I decided to move to my Banks Blind. It was located on the east side of the block of timber on the other side of the food plot. Bud had walked right by it that morning, so I felt like I would have a pretty good chance at him that evening if he exited the timber on the east side.

I saw several deer that afternoon in the food plots, but Bud didn’t show up again until 3:45. Unfortunately he walked out of the timber right underneath the stand that I had been in that morning, which was 300 yards from the Banks Blind. He was on a mission too. He was running across the narrow field into a big block of timber in search of does. Right before he disappeared into the timber, I grunted as loud as I could. He stopped and stared in my direction for what seemed like an eternity. I grunted once more very softly and he immediately turned and started walking my way.

I quickly opened up the two windows on the Banks Blind that I thought I could shoot him out of and got ready. It was awesome watching him walk those 300 yards. He would stop about every 50 yards and grunt really loud. Once he checked out the first food plot and didn’t see any deer, he knew the grunt must have come from the other food plot around the corner. As soon as he committed to walking around the corner to check out the other food plot, I knew that it was about to happen.

I’ve got to admit that after three years of watching this magnificent animal grow and after 22 days of hunting him, I was a nervous wreck. I drew my bow when he was about 30 yards away angling towards the blind. When he walked through the first window he was broadside at about 20 yards but he never stopped. I didn’t want to stop him if I didn’t have to. Unfortunately he stopped between the two windows for around 30 seconds. I was afraid to move because I wasn’t sure what he was going to do. Finally, he started walking again and entered my second shooting window. Since he obviously wasn’t going to stop, I stopped him with a mouth grunt and immediately squeezed off a shot.

I watched as my arrow covered the distance seemingly in slow motion and disappeared through his chest. He immediately bolted into the timber and all was quiet. In an instant, my three-year quest for this buck had ended. As I replayed the shot over and over in my mind, I felt like I had hit a little farther back and a little lower than I wanted to. I elected to wait until morning to track him.

That was a long, sleepless night! At daybreak the next morning, my wife, Jacqueline, and 11-year-old son, Parker, joined me to look for him. The blood trail was excellent from the beginning and after about 20 yards I realized he was bleeding really well and wouldn’t be far. Another 50 yards and there he was! I can’t describe the feeling of finally laying my hands on this giant whitetail. All the years of watching him and passing him had finally paid off!

After we loaded Bud into the truck, I pulled the card from the Reconyx camera that I had facing the blind. I was hoping that I got a picture of him walking by the blind before I shot. Sure enough, the Reconyx had taken three awesome pictures of Bud while I was in the blind at full draw about to shoot.

We spent that entire day taking pictures and videos of Bud. Late that evening, we finally had a chance to put a tape to his antlers. His 6×6 gross typical frame was 194 5/8 inches and he had nine inches of abnormal points. As a typical, Bud would net 177 4/8 inches, and as a non-typical he would net 195 4/8 inches—a Booner either way you look at him! The most distinguishing characteristics about his rack are his long, 27-inch main beams and his mass. His main beams and all of his tines had exceptional mass.

I want to thank God for blessing me with an awesome farm and for giving me the opportunity to harvest a buck of this caliber. For me, there is nothing more exciting from a hunting standpoint than harvesting an old mature buck with whom I have plenty of history.

◄ Back

Next ►

Picture 1 of 26

NAW's Best Bucks of 2012

It was late September when I received an email from my buddy Mike that was titled “deer pics.” I hoped that we would have some nice bucks on camera, and as I read the short message that contained the words “Code Name: BIGSHOW,” I knew that this was no ordinary email.

I opened the attachments and to my surprise, I discovered one of the biggest bucks that I had ever seen. Immediately I thought, How am I going to get close to this deer during shooting hours?

All of the trail cam pictures that we had were between the hours of 9 p.m. and 3:30 a.m. I would typically hunt every weekend, but my priorities were my 10-month-old daughter and my wife, who was seven months pregnant at the time. I knew my time in the woods would be limited, but perhaps the lack of pressure would turn out to be an advantage in tagging this monster buck.

I made it out to the woods in early October for a morning hunt. After the morning hunt, I hung a stand in a spot I had hunted in previous years. The location is in a flat bottom with a creek running along the north and east sides and a steep, brushy hillside on the west, making it a very secluded area. I thought this would be the best place to catch the buck during daylight hours. I hunted the newly hung stand in the middle of October for a morning hunt but didn’t see anything. This was my last time in the stand until November.

On November 10, I arrived at our lease around 12:15 p.m. The weather was calling for highs in the upper 40s with a northwest wind at 10-15 mph. I got dressed in my Scent-Lok Savanna and sprayed down my clothes, bow and decoy. I had my video camera and camera arm in the truck, but I but couldn’t carry anything else in with me, so with regret I left it in the vehicle. I arrived at my stand location about 12:45 p.m. and started looking for the perfect spot to set up my decoy. I set the decoy up out in front of me, slightly to my right and upwind, with its head pointing to my left. I sprayed the decoy down again and climbed into my stand.

The afternoon started off slowly. I didn’t see anything for the first two hours, but around 3 p.m. I noticed movement up the hill to my left. I saw a doe running, and I knew that a buck was likely chasing her. I caught just a glimpse of antlers through the thick brush but couldn’t tell how big the buck was. I blew on my grunt call but got no response, so I thought I would rattle since I had my decoy set up. I hit the horns together and the woods erupted. There must have been 15 deer up in the brush on the hillside, and they took off in the other direction. I just blew this hunt, I thought.

About an hour later, I heard a grunt from up on the hill, so I decided I would respond with my own grunt. The buck responded to my grunt a couple of times and then he shut up. I never caught a glimpse of him.

For the next 45 minutes, the woods were quiet. I had been seeing quite a few deer but they were holding up on the hill to my left and thick brush stood between us. I knew from hunting this location in previous years that as evening approached, deer would move down off the hill into the small, secluded bottom where my stand is located.

I heard a noise behind me, and I slowly turned my head and spotted a raccoon walking through the woods. I turned back around and immediately saw a buck was walking down the hill about 90 yards away. The buck was coming in to my stand location from the northwest and began working his way through the tall, mature trees at an angle toward the southeast. I knew that this buck was definitely a shooter based on his tine length.

I reached over with my left hand and grabbed my bow off the rest, never taking my eyes off of him but also making sure that I was concentrating on his body movements and not his rack. He worked his way toward the decoy, stopping about 20 yards from it, holding his head up high, smelling the air and pawing at the ground. After about 30 seconds he put his head down. His ears were pinned back and he started circling behind the decoy’s position. That’s when I drew back for the first time. I have never been so nervous in my life; I was literally shaking when I started to draw back on him.

I drew my bow back and settled the pin on him, waiting for a clear shot. He took three steps and stopped again, still facing me. I held as strong and still as possible while he again smelled the air and pawed at the ground. At this point he was 15 yards from the rear of the decoy and he was taking his sweet time about things.

The buck stood there tasting the air, sizing up the competition. He was in plain view, nothing stopping a clear shot between him and I. The problem was he was still facing me at a bad angle with no opportunity of a humane shot. It had been minutes since I drew back my bow. My arms were shaking horribly and I couldn’t hold my draw any longer. I had to let down.

The buck then started circling behind the decoy again with his ears still pinned back and the hair on his back standing up. As I mentioned earlier, I had positioned the decoy with his head pointing to the west. “Bigshow” was moving fast and seemed like he had something to prove. I drew back again and settled my pin on him, waiting for a clear shot. He was standing about 5 yards directly behind the decoy and I was hoping that he would stop before he demolished it. He did, but unfortunately he was directly behind a group of trees. He was only 18 yards away now, but I didn’t have a shot at his vitals. I had to wait, and I hoped that he would take two more steps so I had a clear shot.

The waiting game was on now, but he didn’t seem comfortable standing behind the decoy. Curious about who was invading his territory, he stood there tasting the air with his head held high, pawing at the ground trying to get the decoy’s attention. While he was taking his time evaluating the situation, I was praying that he would just take two more steps forward so I could release an arrow into his vitals.

All of a sudden, he decided to spin around and take two steps back the way he came, turning to look back toward the decoy. There were about five limbs covering the deer’s vitals. I wanted to take the shot badly but there was no room for a clear, ethical shot between the limbs. At this point I had been holding my bow at full draw for several minutes. Again I had to let down.

It took about 30 seconds for “Bigshow” to move again, and when he did it took everything I had to draw back for the third time. He took about four steps away from the decoy and then he turned back to face the decoy for a final look.

As he stood there, quartering away at 25 yards, I settled my pin on him and let the arrow fly. I made sure not to move until the arrow hit the intended mark. “Bigshow” didn’t take a step until the arrow was already through him. He ran about 50 yards to the north before stopping next to a brush pile. He turned to look back toward the decoy and disappeared behind the brush pile. There was a loud crash and I didn’t know if it was him going down or him jumping the creek to make his getaway. It had been 15 minutes between the first time I saw him walking down the hill and what appeared to be the best shot of my life.

Once he disappeared, I sat down and hung my bow up. I reached for my binoculars and started looking for the arrow. I found the black and camo arrow, but I couldn’t tell if it had good blood on it or not. It had been about five minutes since I made the shot, and I decided since darkness was setting in I would sneak down quietly and take a look at my arrow.

I climbed down and found my arrow covered in blood. Since the ground was wet and I could move quietly, I decided to walk up to the brush pile to see if he was lying behind it. As I approached the brush pile, I didn’t see any blood and I was starting to get nervous. I looked back to the treestand and realized that I was not on the same trail that the buck had taken. I then took two steps to my right and spotted pools of blood covering the trail.

I followed the blood trail around the brush pile and immediately spotted Bigshow. I walked up to him and couldn’t believe how big his rack was. He had split G2s on both sides and an extra main beam on his right side. I immediately called Michael, a friend of mine who was hunting on part of our lease across the road. He was still in the stand and didn’t answer the first time I called, so I called him again and proceeded to tell him that I shot “Bigshow!” I let him know that I had already found him and that I would meet him at the truck.

As I headed for the truck, I called my friend, Nick, to tell him the great news, since he wasn’t coming up until the following day. I couldn’t describe how big he was on the phone and told him that he had to come up early the following day to see “Bigshow” for himself. Once I made it back to the truck and got my hunting clothes off, Michael and I grabbed the four-wheeler and headed to get my buck. Once we got “Bigshow” back to camp, I green scored him at 213 7/8 inches net non-typical. The following morning we took some field photos of my buck, and the rest of the morning neighbors were stopping by to see the awesome animal I was lucky enough to harvest.

After the 60-day drying period, Pope and Young scorer Rick Bergloff came to my house to officially measure “Bigshow.” Rick came up with 23 scorable points netting 217 5/8 inches, which ranks 6th all-time in Missouri. I love being able to go out and pursue my passion of bowhunting, while sharing it with my wife, daughter and friends. I now sit back and think to myself what an unbelievable animal and hunt that was. Seeing an animal of this magnitude in his element was an experience I will never forget!

◄ Back

Next ►

Picture 1 of 26

NAW's Best Bucks of 2012

It was mid-afternoon on Nov. 13, 2009, and Gary Morris of Winslow, Ark., was heading south out of Iowa. Driven by a haze of internal frustration, he was headed back to Arkansas six days early. The last three years of planning, anticipation and excitement for his Midwestern hunt had been stolen by an encounter with a 170-inch behemoth buck and a blown 12-yard “chip-shot.”

Reaching the pinnacle of frustration, he called his bowhunting partner, Jaysen Evans, and said, “I am selling all my bowhunting stuff and I am going to buy a crappie boat. Those fish won’t be able to get to me like these big whitetails do. I just can’t take this.”

He was serious, but not serious enough. This is the story of the Garry Morris buck.

Gary, 61, is a taxidermist by trade and has devoted his life to whitetail hunting. The heartbreak Iowa buck was the latest in a long string of “bad luck” that had followed Gary for years. However, Gary’s bowhunting resume is impressive, with numerous Pope and Young-class bucks, several black bears, elk and wild hogs to his credit; he is no stranger to success. But, as Gary said, “I consider myself a good scouter, I position my stands well and I am fortunate on seeing quality bucks, but I have never been able to close the deal on a great deer.”

Somewhere over the course of the phone call with Evans, Gary changed his mind and decided to go back to Iowa. The next morning, out of the same stand he had blown the shot from two days before, Gary arrowed the biggest buck of his life at that time. A heavy horned 150-class Iowa brute. The tables seemed to be turning—little did he know how far they would spin.

The Hunt
It was two years after his fateful decision to turn north and continue bowhunting. Gary had access to a 340-acre farm in Crawford County, Kansas. It was the morning of Nov., 19, 2011, and Gary recalled, “Wind was blowing hard that morning. I didn’t like the feel of the day because I don’t like to hunt in the wind. By 10:30, the wind blew so hard, I actually thought it might take my tree down, so I got down and started doing some scouting.” The weatherman predicted sustained winds of 30 mph and gusts up to 52 mph and a high temperature of 70 degrees—a rut hunter’s worst nightmare!

As Gary hit the ground, he began scouting a part of the farm that he had never been on. Much to his surprise, he found some extremely large rubs that were fresh. With cell phone coverage strong, he called his good friend, Eric Burnett, to relay his find. Gary said, “Eric, if the sign is fresh, this buck is still alive.” Gary knew the property had been heavily hunted the week before.

After hanging up the phone, Gary continued walking and scouting. He was about 80 yards in the timber off the edge of a bean field. It was almost 11 a.m. and howling wind and warm temperature shot Gary’s hopes of a good hunt. Then, despite the moving trees and grass, he spotted the slow, steady movement of deer, walking along the edge of the field 80 yards away. As the deer came into an opening, Gary saw what he had been waiting for the last 40 years to see. It was a giant buck. “I immediately knew that it was the best deer I had ever laid my eyes on,” he said.

As if providence had prescribed it, the howling wind, which earlier in the day was his enemy, had now become Gary’s greatest ally. The wind was blowing directly from the deer to Gary, and he recalled, “I immediately knew that I could move on this deer. He was headed down the edge of the field and every time he would move, I would move.”

Instinctively, Gary knew that this wasn’t an ordinary stalk. The buck would walk for 10-15 yards and then stop. When the buck was walking, Gary was walking full stride en route to cut the buck off. With the blowing wind, the buck couldn’t pick up Gary’s movement. The buck was moving down the field edge and Gary picked an angle that he felt like would eventually get him within range of the buck.

“Within 10-12 minutes I closed the gap to about 30 yards.” Gary said. “At one point, the buck slipped through a small opening and I could have shot, but I wasn’t quite ready.” He remembers thinking he might have missed his only opportunity. Then the buck entered a small, 30-yard by 30-yard thicket on the edge of the field. To Gary’s amazement and disappointment, he watched as the buck began to turn circles, and begin to pat out a bed in the leaves. It was 11 a.m., and he knew the buck might not get up until late that afternoon, or even after dark! He had no shot through the thicket and all he could do was wait.

“I was standing 30 yards from the biggest buck I have ever seen and he was just about to bed down,” Gary said. “Then a huge gust of wind blew through and knocked a big limb out a tree that came crashing down and almost hit the buck!”

The buck jumped, and in a couple of leaps, he was broadside within 10 yards of Gary!

Instinctively, he quickly drew his bow. However, the close movement spooked the buck and he bounded out into the thick timber.

“The woods were thick and I thought I had missed my chance,” Gary said. “Then the buck stopped 35 yards out in the only opening around. I had a small hole that I could see his vitals through. He was quartering away hard, and I shot the buck for 30 yards.”

Gary watched as the arrow appeared to sail right under the giant buck! Gary thought another monster buck had slipped through his clutches! However, upon retrieval of the arrow he was encouraged to find good blood on the ground and on the arrow. He concluded the hit must have been very low.

Ecstatic, Gary called his hunting partner, Jaysen Evans, who was hunting on another farm not far away. After letting the deer lay for three hours, the pair returned to the property in hopes of recovering the buck and ending Gary’s 40-year quest for a giant whitetail. When they pulled into the farm, much to their alarm, they saw three people standing across the field where he had shot the deer. Gary’s heart sank, “What are they doing here? What’s going on?”

As Jaysen and Gary approached the figures, they saw that it was three young boys. The boys had been squirrel hunting with pellet guns and had come across a fresh blood trail and had begun to follow it.

“Quickly, we could tell they were good boys and they were just following their curiosity,” Gary said. The boys said they had found the blood two hours earlier. Gary feared that the boys might have spooked the low-hit buck. In good spirits, Jaysen and Gary recruited the help of the boys to track the buck. The quintet trailed the buck to a bloody bed. The group looked and looked, but couldn’t find which way the buck went when he left. Gary feared that the boys might have spooked the buck out of his would-be deathbed.

After an extended period of time, they decided to split up, leave the blood and simply look for the dead buck. Within a few minutes Gary and Jaysen heard the excited screams of one of the young boys, “I found your buck! I found your buck!” Jaysen and Gary ran to the scene and found the boys standing in awe of the giant, 300-pound-plus Kansas whitetail. Gary had his buck of lifetime.

After examining the body, Gary confirmed the arrow had hit low and behind the shoulder. The arrow didn’t even hit a vital organ, but must have cut a major artery somewhere in the shoulders.

The buck stands out for many reasons. He sports 25- and 26-inch main beams and has exceptional mass, over 40 inches. The buck is only 15 7/8 inches wide and his tallest tine is 9 5/8 inches, but the buck has 29 abnormal points, almost exclusively around the massive bases. With 40 scoreable points, the buck was measured by Boone and Crockett scorer Kirk Kelso and had a final net non-typical score of 221 5/8 inches. This is an unbelievable highpoint in Gary’s bowhunting career.

Sometimes the wheels of the whitetail world turn slowly. Especially when your goal is to attain something that all amounts of human effort, striving, planning, practice and desire can’t produce on their own—a 200-inch buck. In closing, Gary said, “To kill this buck in the worst possible conditions is the most unbelievable thing to me. I’ve hunted in pristine conditions for years and never seen a buck like this. Big deer in the Midwest just don’t move in the middle of the day when it’s hot. I just got there at exactly the right time, right before he bedded. What are the chances? It was like I could do no wrong on this buck. Sometimes things are meant to be, and this was one of them.”

◄ Back

Next ►

Picture 1 of 26

NAW's Best Bucks of 2012

Looking back on it now, I can clearly divide my whitetail hunting career into two “eras”—Before Trail Camera Photo and After Trail Camera Photo. That’s how much my hunting perspective changed after I pulled the memory card from my trail camera on October 16, 2011.

The photo was actually dated October 14, and it clearly showed a whitetail of unbelievable proportions. His rack unquestionably carried the most massive, sweeping frame I had ever seen on a live deer, and his bases were simply unreal. But what held the most importance for me was that the buck was healthy and both sides of his rack were undamaged.

The interesting thing about this deer was that I actually could have shot him on my family’s Ohio farm the previous year, but it was missing something fairly important—the entire right side of his rack.

The buck had walked under my stand in 2010, and instead of picking up my bow, I had grabbed my iPhone to snap of a photo of him. The buck was only carrying his left side, and as deer season was far from over, it seemed odd that he would have shed the right side already.

I remember coming back to the house after that hunt and excitedly telling my father-in-law, Wes, that if this deer carried anything remotely similar to his left antler on his right side, he would easily top 180 inches. I think I even threw out the number 200.

I’ve seen plenty of deer with broken antlers, but I had never seen one broken completely off above the base. At that time in 2010, it was too early in the season for the deer to have started dropping antlers, which had me wondering if this deer had some form of genetic defect that was impeding antler growth on his right side.

As he worked his way around my stand during that hunt in 2010, I fixed my Leica binoculars on his head, trying to determine what had happened to his right main beam, but at 35-40 yards, I couldn’t see enough to make a solid guess. I passed on the buck that year in hopes that he would stick around and grow a matched set of antlers in 2011.

So when I retrieved the memory card from my camera in October 2011, you can imagine how excited I was to find a photo of the buck. From that point on, I knew that if I put in enough time on-stand, it was simply a matter of time and luck for our paths to cross again. I think you probably could have classified my interest in the buck as an obsession. I know my wife would have.

The Sunday following my trail camera discovery, I went to my son’s final flag football game, and then I was off to the farm to hunt. Wes was already in his treestand when I arrived, so I texted him to let him know I was making my way into the woods.

We discussed which stand I should hunt via text message, but I had trouble making a decision. The property has several different stand setups to choose from. Should I hunt the stand 20 yards away from where the trail camera captured the buck’s image? Or should I hunt the stand where I had taken the iPhone picture a year earlier? Or maybe I should hunt one of the other 10 stands on the farm.

I had never debated a stand selection this much in my life, but then again, I had never been pursuing a buck of this caliber. In the end, I settled on the “iPhone stand,” and I climbed in around 3 p.m.

Thirty minutes into the hunt, a young forkhorn appeared about 50 yards in front of me, looking like he was on a mission. An hour after he cruised through, a group of four does rushed through the area, and I knew something—perhaps the giant non-typical—was pushing them. I stood up and grabbed my bow, ready for action, only to be disappointed when the eager forkhorn cruised through again, hot on the heels of the preceding does.

By 6 p.m., things had settled down again, and I was starting to think this hunt would end like so many others, with little activity and no blood. The sun was headed down, and I decided to stand up so that I’d be ready in case the buck did show up.

No sooner had I stood up than I caught movement up the hill from my stand. I didn’t get too excited because I had been seeing so many of the same deer in the hunts leading up to this point. I could see without my binoculars that this deer had a decent rack, and I led myself to believe that it was likely the big 10-pointer I had already passed up twice that season.

I pulled up my binoculars to confirm it was the 10-pointer and immediately spotted a drop tine. I couldn’t believe it! It was the giant non-typical. I laid down a couple of grunts and a doe bleat in his direction, but it didn’t look like he was interested. The buck was just gradually making his way down the hill at his own pace, and it looked like he was on the same trail that the four does had used when they pushed through earlier.

The does had moved into an open area about 30 yards from my stand, and I was desperately hoping the buck would do the same. With my bow in one hand and my Leica rangefinder/binocular in the other, I watched the buck slowly make his way closer. At 38 yards, he hung up, and I readied my bow for a 40-yard shot. There was a tree covering his hind legs and another covering his head and chest. All I had to do was split the uprights.

As I moved my release toward my bow, I could see my hand was shaking slightly. I really could not believe this was about to happen. This was my chance to close the deal. I drew back and tried to get comfortable but couldn’t. My head cover was in the way, and I had to let down and resituate my headgear. Once again, I clipped my release back up to my bow, hand still shaking, and drew back on my bow.

If I let the buck continue walking in the general direction he had chosen, he would likely come into an opening 8 yards closer to my stand, but there was also no guarantee he would take that route. I decided to take the shot I had been given, and I let the arrow fly. I don’t recall the flight path that the arrow took, but the buck mule-kicked like he had been hit. Still, I wasn’t sure if or where I had hit him, and I immediately nocked another arrow in case I got a follow-up opportunity.

The buck ran about 40 yards, then stopped directly in front of me. As I drew my bow, the buck turned to face me, leaving me with only a chest or neck shot. I released another arrow and watched as he turned and bounded 50 or 60 yards away from me. I watched him slow to a walk, believing that I had just missed the opportunity of a lifetime—twice!

I texted Wes to let him know what had just happened, and we decided I would wait in the stand until he arrived after his hunt. That way, I could direct him to the shot locations from the perspective of the treestand.

When Wes arrived, it was completely dark. We started looking for blood or one of my arrows, but it was turning out to be pretty difficult. We walked over to the spot where I had shot the buck the second time, and again we couldn’t find any signs that the buck had been hit.

Obviously, I was beside myself. I had talked about this deer for a year and hunted him for two weeks straight without any breaks until today. The buck finally shows up and I miss him—twice!

“Don’t worry about it,” Wes told me. “You’ll only think about this for the rest of your life…”

We walked to check one final spot—the last place I saw the buck as he had walked away from me after the second shot. We approached the spot carefully, hoping to find the buck lying down, but with it being completely dark and without a flashlight, we would have had to step on the buck to find him.

Up to that point, I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about what I could have done differently. I kept replaying the final moments over and over in my head. I should have let him take a few more steps, I told myself. That way, he would have been completely in the open. The drive home that night was somber—no music, no funny talk shows. When I got home, my daughter, Ashton, sad, “Don’t worry, Dad. You’ll get another chance at him.”

That made me feel a little better, but I knew that the buck had given me an opportunity, and I had wasted it. Needless to say, I couldn’t sleep that night, and in between dozing off, I would wake up and replay the shot over and over.

The next morning, I couldn’t wait to get up and go back out to the farm to look for the buck in the daylight. When I got there, I went to the spot where I had first shot the buck. Once again, I could find no blood or an arrow. It was the same scenario at the second shot location. I couldn’t believe it.

Finally, I double-checked the spot where I had last seen the buck. About 40 yards into the woods, I could see the monster’s white belly sticking up. I shouted and laughed all the way over to the buck.

When I got there, the first thing I inspected was actually not his rack. I had studied them so much from the trail camera photo that I knew exactly what they looked like. I was more interested in which one of my arrows had brought him down.

The first shot was a complete pass through and couldn’t have been placed better. I think if I hadn’t shot the deer a second time, he probably would have dropped right in front of me, but when he was hit again, his adrenalin took over and he was able to run again.

It was obvious where the second arrow had impacted because the shaft was still sticking out of his windpipe. If the first shot didn’t kill him, the second one would have.

I was thrilled and incredibly blessed not only to have a history with this buck, but also to be able to finally seal the deal. Last but not least, I’m glad I won’t have to “think about this for the rest of my life.”

◄ Back

Next ►

Picture 1 of 26

NAW's Best Bucks of 2012

Three hundred and twenty steps later, my thoughts were confirmed. No blood, hair or sign of impact indicated that I had missed the deer of a lifetime. My head was spinning, wondering what had just happened in the previous 15 minutes; it happened so fast.

What could I have done differently, and what did I do wrong? My heart was heavy and my stomach was uneasy. How was I ever going to be able to tell the guys that I had blown the shot of a lifetime? I went on to work and broke the news to the rest of our hunting group. The responses were all the same. They were very supportive, which seemed to help ease my pain.

Later that night as I laid in bed, I continued to toss and turn, reliving the events of that morning. The reward for all of the hard work and stress that we had endured as a group over the last three years was right before me and somehow I managed to let it slip away, or so I thought.

Three years ago, the deer was a young, aggressive 3-year-old with a temper. He had dismantled one side of his rack trying to earn a spot in the pecking order. He was a little bigger than the other deer his age, sporting a 150-inch-plus rack, which was more than impressive for a deer his age.

The buck seemed to be a regular on the trail cameras we had been using, beginning early in antler-growing period. That year there was a bigger deer in the woods that our group of hunters was chasing. There were opportunities to harvest the 3-year-old, but everyone had bought into the idea that he would get bigger with age. We had set management goals, one of which was to let the deer reach maturity, which we considered to be 5 years old.

To aid in these management goals, we annually planted 10 acres of food plots consisting of clovers, rye, standing corn and beans. We also used 10 game cameras to help monitor the deer. Game cameras were vital in our management plan, allowing us to know what deer were out there and where they might be located. Based off of pictures, we could gain a good idea of the ages of the animals. With some strategic camera placement, we were rewarded with high quality and quantity of deer pictures.

The following summer came around and there he was again fairly early on, but this time he had a surprise. He was now sporting a small drop tine, which any avid hunter loves. Throughout that summer, we watched him on camera and also watched him a lot feeding in a bean field. I had access to a protected bean field, and I could sneak up a hill without being detected and glass the field. The field was easy to get to, so several nights a week, when the wind was right, I would travel to this spot with binoculars in hand to watch what came out to feed.

At the time there was another deer that we had also been watching that was a year older. Although this deer was a year older his rack wasn’t quite as impressive. Based on our plan, he was the deer to kill this year. He had reached 5 years old and that was considered mature in our books. During these summer scouting trips, both deer would frequently visit the field, sometimes even at the same time.

In early August of that year, we got a picture of the younger buck still in velvet with damage to his rack. He probably would have been a 180-inch deer if he hadn’t had the antler damage, but because he was banged up, it made it easier on us to pass him up for another year. Even though you know that you want them to reach 5 years old before you take them, it is always hard to pass on a deer that would gross 180 inches.

As we continued to become more experienced with our deer management, we felt that we needed to start putting a name with the deer we were following. This gave us an easier way to communicate about the deer without having to explain and describe each deer in full detail each time they were seen.

Naming the deer was a process. Each deer had a name that fit them, and usually had something to do with a unique characteristic that would make them easy to detect. One night as I was looking through pictures with my wife, I told her that someday this deer would be a deer that everyone would be talking about, but we couldn’t find a name that we felt fit him.

As we continued to look through pictures and talk about that deer in particular, I kept pointing out that in the pictures his drop tine was always broken off. That had been irritating the heck out of all of us. As she thought about it she came up with the name “Bankrupt.” Her reasoning was that if the deer was constantly “broke,” he might as well be bankrupt. The name seemed to fit him perfectly, and it didn’t take long for it to stick.

During that season, three of us—Emmett, Sam, and myself—bowhunted this ground, and we had all decided that Bankrupt should get another pass. His rack was not in good condition and he still was a fairly young deer. There were a couple encounters with him but those were far and few between.

As he continued to age, he was also becoming wiser, which made the hunt even more difficult. As we went from bow to rifle season we gained a fourth member to our group, Dustin.

On December 5 of that season, I was able to tag an older deer that ended up being 5 years old. While I was admiring my kill, Emmett had Bankrupt in his sights 80 yards from his blind. My brother-in-law, Matt, was sitting with him, videotaping the hunt. They got some amazing footage of the deer, and Emmett had even clicked the safety off and was ready for the kill. But as he watched the deer, he ended up clicking the safety back on, knowing that the deer had such great potential.

For the rest of the season and past closing day, we continued to get pictures of Bankrupt on camera. This ensured us he had survived yet another season, but it left us wondering how long we would be able to keep this impressive deer our secret.

That spring we did some CRP burning to manage the native grasses, and we found one of his sheds from two years prior. To see and touch his sheds was enough to get everyone amped up for the next deer season. A frenzy of sorts started with the shed hunting after this, and Matt was able to find the match. In Emmett’s shed hunting adventures, he was able to find one side of his rack from the previous year, but as much as we continued to look, we never found the other side for the complete pair.

Trail cameras were checked weekly, and every time our hope was that he would be there. One little glimpse is all we needed, and finally, he was there! The pictures were few and far between, but we were able to get some pictures of him in velvet. These pictures were enough to assure us that the decision to let him grow was a great one. The field I normally scouted had been rotated back to corn, and the beans were on the other side of the ground, making scouting a little more challenging. There wasn’t an easy way to the bean field, and you couldn’t see over or though the corn.

We were going weeks to a month at a time between pictures of the buck. By late August, we still hadn’t seen a picture of him with a full-grown rack. The last picture taken was on my birthday, July 19. We had no idea of his true size or even if he was still in the area. In the middle of August we were out of town and a terrible storm ripped through our area. The damage was unimaginable, 100 mph winds and baseball-size hail did incredible damage to crops, trees and the land in general.

The two forces combined took a fully mature field of corn down to stalks that were barely knee high. The center of our management plan was our resource of trail cameras. They didn’t fare so well in the storm; out of the 10 we had, four were destroyed. The hours spent on cleanup made it hard to get to the good trail cameras to check them.

At this time, killing Bankrupt was one of the last things on my mind. One afternoon I retrieved the memory cards from the cameras that were still functional and figured I needed to go through them to see what we had. What was in front of me was more than I ever thought was possible. We had caught Bankrupt on camera again, and it was almost like he was conducting a photo shoot for us. Based on the pictures in front of me, Bankrupt was doing amazingly well. He had turned into the deer of a lifetime.

Everyone was focused on the upcoming bow season and how we were going to harvest him. We all took to the field with bows in hand, trying to run into him. One thing this deer had never done for us over the years was show any distinct patterns. The area has low pressure, and the bucks roam around freely.

The season rolled on and nobody had seen Bankrupt. There was some frustration mounting and a little fear that maybe someone had poached him. But all it took was one more trip to check trail cameras. That night revealed that there was a three-day window where he presented himself in range during daylight hours. One occasion was Halloween night about 45 minutes before dark. I had lobbied to hunt that night, but family is more important and I took my kids trick-or-treating.

During the peak week of the rut, Emmett was on vacation, and he spent most of his time chasing Bankrupt. One of the few encounters with Bankrupt occurred as Emmett was leaving the stand and heading back to the truck. He saw him across the fence on neighboring property, which we also had permission to hunt. Emmett put a sneak on him and was able to get within 50 yards of him, but the buck was preoccupied with a doe and never offered a shot.

We had finally reached rifle season, which is always the Wednesday after Thanksgiving. The plan was to put in as much time as possible. We run a family-owned fertilizer and chemical business, and with the good winter we were having, it was a busy time. This made it hard to hunt as much as we wanted. I was determined to go out every morning before work and get in at least 45 minutes of daylight. This leads us back to where I started this story.

On the first Friday of the season, I went out like I had the previous two mornings, but this time was different. Three deer came out in front of me, but it was too dark to tell what they were. I could tell two of them were bucks, and in my gut I knew that Bankrupt was one of them. I glassed very intently but could not verify it was him for several minutes until there was enough daylight. In the time I let slip away he had continued to move farther away.

I steadied my rifle and took the shot and he just walked off. I knew I missed and after figuring out how far it was I knew why. It was farther than I had estimated. I climbed down and paced off the shot—320 steps. There was no blood, no hair, no sign of impact. A week had passed since my last encounter. We had been working long days, which made it challenging to get in the deer blind before dark.

My plan was to sneak out to the same field where I had scouted so often before. This cornfield had been devastated by the August storm, which made it a great feeding ground because corn was scattered all around. It was almost 5:15 p.m., so time was running out as I sneaked up the hill.

Knowing the deer would already be out, I had prepared my rifle with the bipod folded out, and I crept gingerly up the hill. I eased over the top to take a peak, and there he was, feeding with some does. I quickly took a seat and steadied my Browning rifle. As soon as I settled in, I took a deep breath, centered the crosshairs on his vitals and squeezed off a shot. Down he went!

The bullet had hit a rib bone and fragmented, and a piece had lodged up in his spine. Matt wasn’t too far behind me; he had walked to this spot not too long after me and had reached the base of the hill when I shot. “I got him,” I yelled, and we hurried out to get a closer look at him. After exactly 181 steps, we were there and he was every bit of what we had hoped. We loaded him up and took him to where we meet as a group, and the celebration began.

The news spread fast and it seemed like my phone was ringing all night with congratulations. Words can’t explain the way I felt being able to take this deer. It is deer like this that make hunting such an amazing experience.

Bankrupt had 26 points and grossed 247 4/8 and netted 238 4/8. This made him No. 12 among the biggest non-typicals ever taken with a rifle in the state of Kansas. I entered Bankrupt in the first annual Monster Buck Classic of Kansas event and he was crowned the non-typical “King of Kansas.” Several people have asked me if I am done hunting. My response to them is it’s not just about the size of the deer. It’s all about our passion for hunting.

◄ Back

Next ►

Picture 1 of 26

NAW's Best Bucks of 2012

As I nocked an arrow, I sat back and started to reminisce a little bit about the “good old days” of my hunting career. I thought back to my days of cutting truck loads of firewood as a boy to earn enough money to make the trip to Hansen’s archery and purchase a dozen aluminum arrows and some Bear broadheads for the upcoming season. Of course, I would always have to spend a little time looking at the new compound bows…

I can still remember the grief that I got from the old-timers for “selling out” when I bought my first compound, and for years before I could drive, I would plead with my dad for hours until he would agree to take me to the local hunting meetings and sport shows, where local guys like Floyd Pluger and Jack Bazile would talk about a “new” concept called Quality Deer Management (QDM). Sometimes, back then, it didn’t go over real well, but these guys were practicing it long before it was the cool thing to do.

I had to laugh a little when I thought back to my early archery seasons and how it took me a couple of years to finally score on my first buck—a spike—and how my 10-year-old son, on a mentor hunt with me, had just shot a 13-point, 156-inch buck, his first with the bow, just a few days ago on opening weekend. How times change…

‘Really Good Bucks’
The flick of a deer tail brought me back to reality, I chastised myself for letting my mind wander, but, hey, that’s what memories are for, right? I thought to myself, You’d better pay attention. There are some really good bucks roaming these ridges.

We had been getting some great trail camera photos of a handful of bucks that would span from the 150s to 170s and one in particular that would probably go well into the 200s. The neighbors and I had been getting trail camera photos of him all summer, and I was hoping to be in the right place at the right time when the opener rolled around.

I had been practicing some form of QDM on this property since the early 90s. I’ve found that, for me, the key to being successful is hunting high and trying to be as scent-free as possible. I use the property very little, if at all, during the off-season. Shed hunting is the only time that I actually walk the entire piece of property. I try not to put any pressure on the local deer herd. I guess I call it the “Less is More” theory.

My strategy is to do most of my scouting with trail cameras, and I check them at most once a week. You can get a pretty good idea of where a certain buck is traveling by monitoring your trail camera photos. Then, all you have to do is connect the dots to get a travel pattern set up for him. If I have a buck using the property on two days out of seven, I will only go after him on the days that he should be there, hunting only the right wind.

If the wind is wrong, I stay off of the property, because sometimes you only have one chance at a buck. Pressure him and he’s gone. Obviously, this is nothing that you haven’t heard before, but I truly believe this is one of the big keys to my success.

Opening Day
Saturday, the opening day of bow season in Wisconsin, brought with it a south wind, the absolute worst for trying to get close to such a seasoned deer in the area he was using on my property. I elected to take my son to a different stand to try to get him on his first buck. We didn’t have any chances for a shot the first night. Sunday arrived with another poor wind ranging from south to straight west.

I so wanted to try for the big buck, but I decided to hunt with my son again, and it was the right decision. At 5 p.m., he arrowed a nice deer, and at 7 p.m., we were hugging and exchanging “high fives” over his first buck. I’ve had the chance to do some really cool things in the outdoors, but watching my son take his first buck far surpassed anything that I have accomplished in my time afield.

On Tuesday morning, I checked the weather for our area: a north-northeast wind was expected, just what I needed. I headed for home, excited by thoughts of the hunt and a possible encounter with the big buck swirling in my head.

As I turned onto my road, I was greeted with the sight of the farmer who rents my cropland chopping the corn off of the field that butts right up to the woods and small food plot where I had been getting most of the trail camera photos of the giant buck for the last three weeks. The sight of this shocked me enough that I almost drove into the ditch!

Our area gets pressured very heavily by “shiners”—people who cruise the back roads with a spotlight, searching for deer in open fields. The previous spring, when I saw the local farmer was planting about 90 percent corn in the fields surrounding my property, I was overjoyed. This would give the deer some much-needed cover to conduct their daily routines without being bothered by spotlights.

I had originally wanted to hunt the buck from a ground blind on the edge of a food plot where I had been getting most of the trail camera photos of him. Now, I had a full-scale corn harvesting operation just a few yards from the food plot where I wanted to sit. I thought to myself, If he comes down to the field and sees that his sanctuary is gone, it will be a death sentence for any chance of getting close to this buck. I knew that once he realized the standing corn was gone, he would drastically change his travel patterns.

On the Fly
It was time to devise a new plan. I went back over my trail camera photos of the deer. When he came into the small food plot and I would get photos of him, he was usually headed northwest. This meant that he was using one of three trails leading into the small food plot coming in from a bedding area about 20 acres away. I had a Shadow Hunter enclosed blind about halfway between the bedding area and the small food plot.

It was in an area of overgrown pasture, with extremely thick cover around the blind and just four shooting lanes carved out of the brush and planted with clover. With the north wind, two of the three trails that led to the food plot were on the upwind side of the stand within 35 yards, but one of the trails was about 20 yards downwind of the blind. I thought to myself, If the corn was still there, I wouldn’t chance it, but with the harvesting underway, I have to try it. It might be my one and only chance at the buck.

I went through my usual ritual of showering and spraying down and slowly slipped into the Shadow Hunter. I only opened three of the eleven windows in the blind, one overlooking each trail that the buck could possibly take to the food plot. For fear of deer getting downwind and busting me, I left the clear windows up to reduce my scent. It would be tough to get the windows down for a quick shot, but my main concern was not alerting any deer to my presence.

Around 4:30 that afternoon, I finally got a break. The farmer quit chopping corn, and shortly thereafter the deer started moving. A little after 6 p.m., I spotted a 9-point buck with a forked G-2 that was in the same bachelor group as the big buck.

They often showed up on the same trail camera photos together. He came in on one of the upwind trails north of the stand and started to browse on some of the clover planted in the shooting lane. Thinking that the big buck might be with him, I slowly slid the window down and ranged him at 32 yards. I attached my release on the string and waited. The 9-pointer fed for a few minutes, looked back a couple of times and then continued toward the food plot.

I waited at the ready for another 20 minutes, to no avail. I took my release off of the string and slowly slid the window back up. A few minutes later, I noticed a couple of does feeding in the shooting lane to my east, I glanced out of the window on the downwind side to the south and noticed a small 6-pointer making his way down the ridge to the food plot.

He walked into the downwind shooting lane at 20 yards and stopped. Initially he seemed undisturbed until he threw his head up and stared in my direction. After a few seconds he turned and nervously walked back up the ridge on the same trail that he had come in on. How could he have smelled me? I looked out my east window at the does and they were still feeding undisturbed. After watching the does for a few seconds, I glanced out of my north window to where the 9-pointer had passed 30 minutes ago, and there he stood.

The 200-inch non-typical had his head down, feeding on the clover. The small 6-pointer downwind of me must have caught a glimpse of the big buck or scented him. Wanting no part of the older, bigger buck, the 6-pointer turned and retreated back up the ridge.

I slowly reached up and slid the clear window down, the blustery north wind masking any sounds I might have made. As I slowly lifted the bow for the shot, the buck’s head was still down. I drew and anchored in that old familiar place on my cheek. I looked through the peep and put the sight pin on the deer.

The whole shot process seemed to last an eternity, but in reality it probably only took a few seconds. I settled the pin behind the buck’s shoulder, but just as I was getting ready to release the arrow, the massive buck lifted his head and looked right at me. That sight will be with me forever.

I slowly started to put pressure on the release while holding the pin steady behind his front shoulder. The shot surprised me a little, but the arrow was on its way. A split second later, it buried itself in the buck’s vitals right where the sight pin had been. The buck whirled and was gone.

Record-Book Buck
As I sat back in my chair, the gravity of the situation started to sink in and the nerves started to hit me. Over the next several minutes I replayed the shot in my head a few of times. Did the arrow deflect? Did I get enough penetration? I gave the buck a few minutes to exit the area, and I slowly crawled down and slipped out of the woods, headed back to the house.

When I walked into the house, my wife, Tammy, and our son, Seth, greeted me with huge smiles on their faces because, over the years, me coming in early from hunting could only mean one thing. After sharing the story with them, I called a few close friends to help track. After a couple of hours we assembled at the site of the shot, and the reassuring shout “I’ve got blood” started us on a 75-yard blood trail that ended with that old familiar, “There he is!”

We knew from the trail camera photos that the buck was a giant, but nothing can prepare you for the moment when you finally get to lay your hands on him. It was a very special night, not only because of the hunt but because of special people who shared in it. I am truly blessed to have grown up and live in an area like this. To my friends and neighbors, it takes a community to grow a deer like this, not just one person. If you’ve seen this deer on your property, have trail camera photos or have found his sheds over the years, you had a hand in making this deer what he was.

◄ Back

Next ►

Picture 1 of 26

NAW's Best Bucks of 2012

(Editor’s Note: After the mandatory 60-day drying period, Paul Keller’s Waupaca County non-typical was scored by a panel of measurers, tallying a net non-typical score of 231 4/8, which ranks it as the No. 4 non-typical bowkill in Wisconsin history.)

You need only skim the pages of the Boone & Crockett Club record book to understand why the majority of hunters pick the November rut as the prime time to hunt giant whitetails. Mature bucks are never a pushover, but they are more vulnerable when their nose is glued to the ground trailing an estrus doe.

But the early season can be just as rewarding, provided you’ve located a couple mega bucks beforehand and hunt them while travel patterns are still somewhat predictable. Such was the case for Fred Swihart, and his efforts paid off with a giant 16-point non-typical that grossed 221 inches and netted 215 3/8 inches. The Swihart buck ranks among the top five killed with a bow in Iowa in 2012 and is very likely the largest taken on public land too.

Setting Goals
When Swihart first started hunting with his father 18 years ago, shooting a record-book buck may have been on his mind, but it certainly wasn’t a priority. That all changed when he hooked up with a couple of whitetail fanatics at Iowa State University. Sure, the majority of Swihart’s time was devoted to his study of chemical engineering, but any spare time was spent hunting or scouting for next year’s buck. He didn’t have the luxury of driving home every weekend, so he relied on nearby public lands.

At first, Swihart’s goal was to shoot a Pope & Young buck, but it wasn’t long before the goal post was raised to a much higher level. He set his sights on shooting a buck that would make the Boone & Crockett Club record book, a feat that few accomplish in a lifetime.

Over a 10-year span, Swihart had taken six bucks that grossed over the B&C minimum. Unfortunately, they all fell short of making the record book after deductions. Most interesting is the fact that all but one was taken on public hunting ground. Did he give up? Nope. Swihart’s quest continued, and his goal became a reality last October.

White Gold
“Most of my scouting is done during the post-season, running trail cameras and searching for shed antlers,” Swihart said. “In February, I spend a fair amount of time combing the fields and bedding areas for dropped antlers. This particular piece of public ground I’ve been hunting for several years, and I pretty much know where the bucks winter. In February of 2011, I found a shed antler that measured 81 6/8 inches. Based on that, I was fairly confident the buck would easily push 180 inches or more the following season. Finding sheds of that size certainly warrants hunting the area the following season. That’s exactly what I did.”

Swihart hung a stand in the general area where that shed and several others had been found. On opening day of the 2011 season, he caught a glimpse of a big buck within a few yards from where the 81 6/8-inch shed was found. He was almost certain it was the same deer, only much bigger. Swihart hunted the deer all season, but he wasn’t able to close the distance.

“In February of 2012, I went back to the same area, hoping to find the buck’s sheds,” Swihart said. “I didn’t find either antler from that buck, but I found a 74-inch shed from another deer. That day alone I picked up 14 sheds within (200 yards).”

The Plan
“On opening day of the 2012 season, I jumped a huge buck again in the vicinity of where the sheds were found,” Swihart recalled. “Based on the visual sightings and sheds over a two-year span, I was confident there were at least two B&C bucks in the area and set sights on shooting one of them. The plan was to concentrate my efforts on two areas.

“The primary area consisted of a large block of timber surrounded by both corn and alfalfa. A deep draw runs north and south through the timber, and the saddle is close to the timber edge. The draw is so deep the deer really can’t get downwind, but instead they follow the edge to a flat in the corner of the timber. A cedar thicket nearby is a bedding area and also where the majority of the sheds were discovered. I was fairly confident it was the core area of the two bucks I had sheds from. To hunt the corner, I would need some sort of north wind, preferably northeast.

“The secondary area was a half mile to the south and much flatter ground. It was the same spot where I had seen a really big buck the year before on opening day, and within 100 yards of where another guy had picked up an 85-inch shed last spring. The plan was to hunt this spot when the winds prevailed from a southerly direction.

“Based on the wind direction, I would alternate between the two places to avoid burning either one out. Although some leave their stands up all season, I prefer to carry my Lone Wolf and sticks in each day. It’s quiet and only takes about 10 minutes to setup.”

Season Opens
“October 5 is actually the first time I hunted (in 2012),” Swihart continued. “The wind wasn’t ideal that afternoon for the primary area, so I opted to hunt the secondary spot where the big buck was seen the year before. In the back of my mind, I was hoping for a repeat appearance, but I didn’t see a single buck that evening.

“The next morning, the wind blew steady from the southwest, so I chose to hunt the same area again. I arrived early and was set up before sunrise. Over the course of the next four hours, a dozen does passed through but nothing with antlers.

“Shortly after lunch, the wind began to shift from Southwest to Northeast. It would be near perfect conditions for my primary area. With that in mind, around 2:30 p.m., I headed toward the corner of the timber where the alfalfa field butted up. I figured it would be the ideal spot to intercept a buck skirting the deep draw and going to the alfalfa.”

“There weren’t any straight trees in the corner, so I settled on a gnarly old choke cherry that was twisted like a snake. I couldn’t get more than 12 feet off the ground but figured it would do.”

Moment of Truth
“An hour before dark, the wind died down but started swirling,” Swihart said. “About that same time a couple deer filtered out of the timber and fed across the alfalfa field. A short time later, two small bucks meandered out and headed toward the cornfield.

“A half-hour before sunset, a doe, fawn and 4-pointer walked right out in front of the stand. It was the exact spot where I expected them to come out. That’s when I felt a slight breeze hitting the back of my neck. It wasn’t long after that that the doe and yearling started getting really nervous and stomping around. The small buck jerked his head up and stared directly at me. I hadn’t made a move but was almost certain he had picked me off. Seconds later, he ran back into the timber. The does continued walking around stiff-legged. They knew something wasn’t quite right.

“The old doe was just standing there looking around. Suddenly, she snapped her head back and stared toward the cornfield. I glanced in that direction and spotted a buck walking out of the corn. I was so stunned that it took a second to register. The buck was a giant with massive antlers. The does freaked out and ran back into the timber. At that point I really thought it was all over. The buck was probably 50 yards away, just standing there looking in my direction.

“I was caught off guard. The bow was still hanging on the hook on my opposite side. The buck’s body began to tense, and he was acting really nervous. With him staring my way, it would be impossible to get my bow without being seen. For whatever reason, he turned and looked the opposite way. That’s when I snatched the bow from the hook and got into position for a shot. The buck turned and started walking at an angle across the field. It was obvious he wasn’t coming any closer, so I drew and mouthed a grunt to stop him. At that instant, I settled the 40-yard pin and squeezed the release.

“Although I had no idea where the arrow hit, the buck took off running like a bat out of hell across the field and went crashing into the timber. I could hear him busting brush for 100 yards or more, then it got quiet.

“I was pretty excited, but I knew enough to wait a few minutes before climbing down to look for blood. Much to my surprise, I couldn’t find a single drop where the buck was standing. Knowing the approximate angle that he ran across the field, I crisscrossed back and forth but didn’t find anything.

“It was getting dark when I decided to search the spot where the buck entered the timber. It was there I found one little spec of blood on a leaf, but nothing else after that. Considering the facts, I decided to mark last blood with an arrow and return in the morning.”

Tough Blood Trail
“My friend, Justin, came along the next morning to help track the deer,” continued Swihart. “We arrived just after daylight and went to the spot where I marked last blood and found a couple sprays right away. It wasn’t heavy by any means. There weren’t any bubbles in the blood, so it didn’t appear either lung was hit. And that had me a bit concerned.

“We followed blood for another 300 yards to a creek and lost the trail. Thinking the buck had crossed the creek, we looked for over an hour before realizing he had doubled back and headed up the ridge. We followed him to a cedar thicket and found four or five places where he had bedded down. By then he wasn’t bleeding much, just a drop or two every 20 or 30 yards.

The trail led to another creek. Justin was standing in the creek looking around, while I stood on the bank trying to figure out which way the buck might have gone. That’s when I spotted my arrow shaft standing up in a brushpile 15 yards away. I was just about to say something, when the shaft started moving and saw the buck lift his head from the brush. Instinctively, I dropped to the ground and started flagging my hands at Justin to get down. Thinking back, it was kind of funny watching Justin flop down in the creek.

“I could see the antlers moving in the brush and was anticipating the buck was about to take off. I rolled over on my back, nocked an arrow and drew the bow. In one fluid motion, I rocked to my knees and stood up. At the same instant, the buck stood up and looked my way. I could see one small patch of brown hair through the brush and figured it was the vitals. I settled the pin on that spot and hit the release. On impact the buck took off running and disappeared from sight.

“Going to the spot where the deer was standing, it took about 20 minutes to find the arrow buried beneath the leafs. Even though it was a complete pass through, we sat for over an hour before taking up the trail. There weren’t any problems following the second trail. The two-blade Rage had done the job.”

Realizing Success
“Having just cleared the timber edge, I spotted him lying on the edge of the cornfield. I ran up to the buck and just stood there, more or less speechless. Justin started jumping up and down, screaming, ‘You got him! You got him!’

“Lifting the rack up for the first time, I couldn’t believe how heavy and massive the antlers were. He was so much bigger than I had originally thought. Prior to that, I thought he was a big 10-pointer. There was no doubt he would definitely go over 200 inches. He was the buck of a lifetime.

“The spot where the buck dropped was a long way from the truck, and I couldn’t drive any closer. That’s one of the pitfalls of hunting public land. Knowing it would take a long time to drag the buck out ourselves, I called my buddy, Michael Owens, and asked him to bring a deer cart. Even with the cart, it took nearly three hours to get the buck back to the truck.”

Conclusions
Swihart’s success on public lands in the past 10 years is proof that you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars to shoot the trophy of a lifetime. No doubt you won’t find a Boone & Crockett whitetail behind every Iowa bush, but time spent scouting now could payoff big for you as well!

◄ Back

Next ►

Picture 1 of 26

NAW's Best Bucks of 2012

To be honest, Jay Price had not even purchased his archery deer license yet when he and hunting buddy Rick Arnall and Rick’s son, Alex, turned off the highway onto one of the countless county dirt roads that crisscross the rich farmland region of southeast Kansas.

It was only October 1, and even though the generous Kansas deer season had begun a couple weeks prior, Price’s scouting forays and trail cameras had really not yielded a buck worth pursuing this early in the season. It’s not that he was holding out for a monster by Kansas standards, but Price really wanted his tag to hang on a buck that would best his biggest buck to date, which scored right at 150 Pope & Young inches.

As the evening shadows lengthened, they continued to bounce down the dirt road towards another small 20-acre farm that Price had permission to hunt. They had already scouted nearly half a dozen farms, glassing bean and hayfields from the comfort of their pickup truck, but to their surprise, their evening had been uneventful and not a deer had been sighted. Frankly, Price felt the small farm they were heading to now would yield pretty much the same results as the others but figured since they were close they would check it out anyway.

Price has called the Sunflower State home for nearly a decade and owns Price Auto Body in Baxter Springs, Kansas. Over the years, he has managed to slip an arrow through several Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri bucks, about a dozen of which measured over 125 Pope & Young inches. But when Price put his truck in park on that fateful evening and glassed the distant hayfield, he couldn’t believe his eyes at first.

“Even without binoculars I could tell it was a big deer,” expressed Price, “but when I actually saw him through the binoculars I knew it was a buck of a lifetime.”

Price said even at nearly 900 yards away the buck dwarfed the 160-inch 10-point that was feeding with him, and the longer he watched him from the cab of his truck, the more excited he became.

“It’s not everyday you see a 200-inch whitetail feeding in a hayfield,” said Price, “and we were enjoying every minute of it.”

Needless to say, as the sun fell below the evening horizon and Price headed back towards town, the first place he stopped was at the local Wal-Mart to buy his Kansas archery whitetail permit. As he signed his name on the dotted line, plans were beginning to take shape as to how he was going to hunt this Kansas giant.

The Game Plan
Price couldn’t stop thinking about that buck and found himself tossing and turning while he slept that night and daydreaming about him the following day, anticipating the events he hoped would happen that evening. He figured just seeing the buck with his Hoyt Trykon XL bow in hand would be some measure of success. An actual shot opportunity would be out of this world.

Price had only hunted this particular 20-acre farm on a handful of occasions the previous season, but because it was relatively small, he felt that he knew how deer used the property’s limited cover. He figured that because it lacked any significant bedding cover, the buck was probably not living there but instead was taking advantage of the rich hayfield and feeding there in the evening.

He also suspected that the buck would enter the hayfield near its northwest corner in the general area of where the neighbor’s tree line touched the property, or somewhere along the north/south hedgerow that ran along the property’s west boundary. Price had obviously never seen this particular buck before, nor had he heard about such a beast in the area, which he knew would have been a secret hard kept, especially since one of his hunting buddies was bowhunting the adjacent property. However, because he had a good idea how deer typically used the property, he was confident in hunting it the following evening without doing any additional scouting.

Many hunters might feel additional time behind the glass a few more evenings would be warranted with such a mature buck on the hoof, and Price readily admits that those thoughts were no doubt swirling through his head as well, but one of the biggest concerns he had was the buck’s behavior. Price explained that since he had never seen this deer before, nor heard about him or had any trail camera photos of him, that this particular buck might be a roamer who was here today and gone tomorrow.

“Frankly” Price stated, “I really didn’t want to miss an opportunity at such a giant buck.”

Needless to say, Price was a little nervous as he exited his truck the following evening and slipped on his Realtree AP leafy-suit. He knew one mistake could send the deer packing, and he wanted to make sure every “T” was crossed and every “I” was dotted.

One of the tactics Price employs while chasing whitetails is to always wear a leafy suit, especially when there are still leaves on the trees, and his camouflage pattern of choice is Realtree AP.

“I get away with a lot of movement with the leafy suit, and I feel much more concealed,” Price said. “Deer have a really hard time seeing me, and it’s much easier to draw and not get picked off.”

Another tactic is his use of scents even during the early season, and he uses them religiously. His favorite is Tink’s No. 1 Doe-P and Tink’s 69, and according to Price, he’s not afraid to use them generously. “Sometimes I will use half the bottle of each scent if the weather’s hot or the wind’s not blowing in the ideal direction,” he said.

He will literally spray down with these scents like one would with scent eliminating spray and insists that it not only masks his scent but also acts as an attractant, regardless of the season. On countless occasions, Price says bucks have been downwind of his stand and unaware of his presence, and oftentimes when they hit his scent line, they headed directly to his tree.

While in the treestand, he will also spray down the area around him and will leave one of the bottles open as well. He admits that he does not think this tactic completely covers his scent, but his personal experience has shown that it most certainly masks his scent enough to keep deer from getting nervous most of the time.

After donning his leafy suit and generously spraying down with Tink’s scents, Price grabbed his bow and began making the warm, 1,000-yard jaunt towards his stand. He had thought long and hard about where he was going to set up, and after much contemplation, he decided a natural ground blind in the hedgerow that ran along the hayfield was the best option this evening.

Although he prefers to hunt from a treestand, Price said that he wanted to be cautious and not bump any deer and also felt that using the natural cover the hedge row provided was a better option than setting up a portable ground blind and brushing it in at this point of the hunt. His idea was to keep the area as natural as possible and not raise any suspicion.

Needless to say, Price had the jitters as he settled into his impromptu blind early that afternoon, and like anyone else, his anticipation soared. The wind was perfect. He didn’t bump any deer, and there was plenty of time to hunt before the orange ball dipped below the western horizon. For the next few hours, Price envisioned how the buck would mysteriously appear in front of him, but as darkness eventually fell, not a deer appeared in the hayfield. The following morning Price tried the same tactic, just hoping for a glimpse of the giant buck as he sat nestled in the ground blind, but as the sun rose higher and mid-morning arrived, not a deer was seen then either.

The Release
Price was a little discouraged, to say the least, and as he walked back to his truck that morning he was beginning to think his opportunity at a Kansas giant was slipping through his fingers. But like any bowhunter who has chased mature whitetails, dedication and tenacity are often factors to success. So when 4 p.m. arrived later that afternoon, Price once again went through his scent-masking ritual and headed to a treestand that was positioned in the hedgerow deeper into the property.

Throughout the evening, Price scanned up and down the hedgerow looking for the slightest movement, but the only activity that drew his attention was a family of skunks playing under his stand. As the evening shadows deepened, so did Price’s discouragement. He stood up and started making plans to exit his 20-foot perch.

In seconds, his heart sent an electrical surge through his chest when he caught movement behind his stand. Noticing a deer’s leg first, and then an enormous set of bone-white antlers through the screen of thick brush, Price knew in an instant it was a big buck. Grabbing his bow, he quickly pressed it into service as the buck was hunched over, doctoring a scrape.

The release surprised Price as much as it did the buck, and at 23 yards it doesn’t take long for a shaft of carbon to rip through its fur-and-bone target. The buck flipped forward upon impact, landing on his side and then got back up and disappeared through the tangle of brush. Price shook uncontrollably as he sat back down and replayed the last few moments in his mind. In less than 30 seconds, he went from feeling like a zero to a hero.

“Nothing can prepare you for something like that,” remarked Price, and when he followed the blood trail the Rage broadhead provided a short time later, he couldn’t believe that he had actually killed such a whitetail!

◄ Back

Next ►

Picture 1 of 26

NAW's Best Bucks of 2012

(Editor’s Note: Jay Price’s Kansas non-typical was scored at the Kansas Monster Buck Classic in January and tallied a gross score topping 226 inches, but side-to-side deductions reportedly knocked the net non-typical score down to 206 6/8 inches. The buck carried more than 45 inches of mass and a 9-point mainframe that scored more than 176 inches. At press time, the buck had not been entered at that score.)

Brian Hollands had mixed emotions as he drove along the dark back roads near Nevada, Mo. Confident, he felt like he had a date with destiny. The former lead-guitarist in a rock band, Hollands normally cranked up his radio and jammed to heavy metal during his morning drives to his hunting spot, but this morning was different. His truck’s cab was quiet as he pondered the previous evening’s hunt. He had grunted a giant buck to the edge of the power line opening. The buck grunted back but never emerged.

For five years, Hollands chased and became obsessed with a big, gnarly-racked buck he nicknamed the “Slant 9” since the buck’s antlers leaned in on one side. Thoughts of bagging this elusive buck occupied his mind for years. He came close but never closed the deal. Now with Missouri’s rut in full swing, he wondered if the great trophy would be careless and offer him a shot.

Making the final turn onto a gravel road that would take him to his hunting property, Hollands would be arriving an hour early, as usual. Bouncing down the rough road, his headlights spied movement ahead. What he saw next sent chills down his spine and altered the course of his morning!

Roots
Hollands lives in Nevada, Mo., where he is the president of Missouri Welding Institute, Inc. His job keeps him very busy, but he still finds time to be outdoors. Hollands, 41, started hunting upland game with his step-dad as a young boy, but he didn’t begin deer hunting until 11 years ago after being exposed to it by his father-in-law, Todd Payne.

“I got started hunting a little late in life, but my father-in-law got me up to speed pretty quick,” Hollands said. “My father-in-law has been hunting for 40 years.”
Brian’s first deer hunt was in neighboring Kansas, while attending college at Kansas University. He hunted the Sunflower State’s rifle season that year and took a 130-class, 10-point buck on the first morning out.

Hollands hunts in Kansas and Missouri and admits to have taken nearly 40 deer. The majority of his bucks were taken with a bow. Hollands has taken seven Pope & Young bucks, with his best scoring 143 6/8.

Hollands credits much of his success to his wife, Megan, who is an avid hunter herself and understands his archery addiction.

“The very first thing that you have to realize is to be a successful bow hunter, it takes a lot of time,” he said. “You have to have patience, strategies, know how to play the wind, scout, build food plots and just have pure luck.”

In honor of his hunting achievements, Hollands was made a member of Mathew’s Dominant Bucks Pro-Staff this past year, after submitting footage of a 140-class 10-pointer he killed from a ground blind.

The Hunt for Slant
During Missouri’s 2008 archery season, Hollands was on a quest to video himself taking a nice buck. That fall, he shot at a 2 1/2-year-old 9-point buck, but his arrow struck high and he never recovered the deer.

Hollands was relieved when the same buck appeared again during the 2009 season. Trail camera photos revealed the buck was still a 9-pointer, but the right side of his rack appeared to be angled. He was given the nickname the “Slant 9.”

Hollands was hunting a soybean field in late October when Slant stepped out 40 yards away, joining 30 other deer on the food plot. Hollands can-called in an attempt to bring the big 9-point closer, but the buck blew and bolted.

His next encounter with Slant came on November 5. Early that morning, the big buck came in on a dead run to his grunt call, before stopping 37 yards away. Brian shot low, missing the monarch. The following spring, Brian picked up one of Slant’s sheds not 30 yards from his treestand.

In the fall of 2010, Hollands’ game cameras revealed Slant was now a 140-class trophy. However, Hollands failed to see the buck until the last day of Missouri’s 2010 gun season, when Slant appeared 300 yards away. Brian shot and missed.

During the spring of 2011, Hollands never found any of Slant’s sheds, causing him to wonder if the harsh winter had taken the giant. That fall, on October 23, Hollands saw Slant while walking to a bow stand. The unique buck now had a 10-point rack with two abnormal points. He saw the great buck several times during the fall season, but was never presented with a shot.

Last August, Holland’s first game camera photos of Slant revealed the buck was now an undeniable non-typical with several abnormal points. The buck’s antlers still bore the “slanted” characteristics, but Hollands now estimated the buck to be in the 170- to 180-inch range. Hollands also got video footage of the buck on August 25. Knowing Slant was hitting the same field every night, he hung a stand on each side of the opening, anticipating the September 15 opener.

During the opening evening, Slant came out an hour before dark and walked through one of Hollands’ shooting lanes 50 yards away but never presenting a good shot. With light fading, Slant walked through a second lane before turning and walking straight away into the thicket. Slant continued to show up on the game cameras until mid-October. Then, he disappeared.

“EHD hit our area pretty hard, and I was afraid it killed Slant too,” Hollands opined. “I was relieved when my father-in-law saw the buck on November 13. (He had) relocated towards the north end of our property.”

During an earlier hunt, Hollands passed up a big-bodied 9-point buck at 15 yards and wondered if he might regret it later. “I clicked off my safety, but made myself let him go,” he said. “I had my heart set on taking Slant.”

This is where things got interesting. Several hunters driving past the property saw Slant, and with a few days remaining in the 2012 season, Holland now had competition.

The Morning Visitor
After a restless night, Hollands crawled out of bed and donned his hunting clothes. He knew the pressure was on. With other hunters chasing Slant, he knew he needed to close the deal.

Hollands pulled out of his driveway feeling optimistic. As he drove, he pondered the events from the previous evening. He had hunted all day in the treestand, where he had missed Slant with a bow in 2009. Just before dark, he grunted in a buck to the edge of the power line that snapped large branches like they were toothpicks. The buck was 50 yards away and shrouded by a thick cutaway. Hollands never got a glimpse but had a hunch it was Slant.

Hollands’ thoughts then returned to the cool early morning. Confident that he finally had the buck patterned, he turned onto the gravel road that would lead him to his hunting spot. While bouncing down the gravel road his headlights found a strange object in the distance. He described the next series of events as “spiritual.”

As he closed the distance, he couldn’t believe his eyes. Standing in the middle of the road, illuminated in the darkness, was a little girl. Her tear-stained face told a story of heartache, and she was shivering. The child was improperly dressed for the frosty, 28-degree morning.

Hollands instantly thought of his own children. He threw his truck into park and went to help the young stranger. Hollands said he did what any parent would do.

“I snatched her up and held her tight to warm her up,” he said. “I brought her to my truck, and turned up the heat so she would feel secure.”

The little girl was within 100 yards of busy Highway 54. Hollands cringed when he thought what could have happened if she had continued in the direction she was heading.

The little girl said her name was Sage, but she couldn’t tell Hollands where she lived. He drove to Jared and Crystal Burch’s house nearby and awoke his friends. They figured out that the young girl’s family had stayed all night at her grandparent’s house nearby. Apparently, her dad, brother, and grandpa left early that morning to go deer hunting, and she awoke upset because they hadn’t taken her. So she dressed and struck out to find them.

After making numerous phone calls to area neighbors, Hollands and his friends finally reached the little girl’s mother, who came to retrieve her daughter. When she arrived, Hollands placed Sage in the arms of her emotional mother. Before Hollands left to go hunting Crystal told him, “Brian, today is your day.”

Hollands texted his wife and family to tell them of his ordeal, and soon his wife received a call from her father. “The Lord is going to bless Brian this morning,” Payne told her.

Closing the Deal with Slant
Still emotional from the morning’s events, Hollands headed to the woods nearly an hour and a half after daybreak. As he reflected on the previous happenings, he smiled knowing he had already had a good day.

“I didn’t even care if I saw a deer or not,” he said. “I knew the little girl was back and safe in her mother’s arms. That’s what really mattered!”

When he arrived at his lease, Hollands grabbed his father-in-law’s .300 Remington Ultra Mag he had borrowed and hurried to his stand. His wait was short before a doe and a fawn crossed the power line and headed for the thicket he was hunting. Five minutes later, a noise revealed the same doe and fawn he had seen earlier, but then another doe appeared. In seconds, a buck grunted from deep in the thicket. Suppressing the urge to grunt back, Hollands decided to let nature take its course. Much like the evening before, branches began to break in the distance.

Suddenly, a big-racked buck emerged from the thicket and stood 60 yards away. Hollands knew the buck was Slant and tried his best to steady the crosshairs on the massive buck. He squeezed the trigger and the big buck bolted. A few seconds later, Hollands heard what he thought was the buck piling up. He prayed the buck was Slant and not the 140-class 9-pointer he had passed on earlier.

After a brief wait, Hollands walked over and found the buck. Still unsure if the buck was Slant, the abnormal points and the inward slanted tines confirmed he had taken his prize. Tears filled his eyes when he realized what he had just done. He called his wife and his father-in-law to tell them his good fortune.

“It truly was a spiritual experience,” Hollands remembered. “I truly felt the Lord was at work that morning.

“I really felt like I had a connection with Slant. Since 2008, when I first laid eyes on him, I saw him a total of 14 times. Now I am finally able to put my tag on him.”

Amazingly, Slant had put on 50 additional inches of antler from the previous year and now carried 16 points. Hollands guessed the giant to score near 200 inches. Slant was scored by Payne—an official scorer for Missouri Big Bucks. The great buck green-scored 204 2/8 and later netted 183 4/8. Hollands’ buck holds the distinction of being the second-largest buck ever taken in Vernon County.

When Hollands dragged the big buck out to the power line, he looked into the distance and he could see the farmhouse where the little girl wandered away from. It brought a smile to his tear-stained face knowing she was okay and that he finally had Slant for his own.

◄ Back

Next ►

Picture 1 of 37

NAW's Best Bucks of 2012

The fact that the 2012 season produced a new Massachusetts state archery record is not exactly surprising, given that this is the third year in a row that the Northeast Big Buck Club has recorded a new record for the Bay State’s archers. By all indications, the trophy bowhunting in this state is getting better every year, and we can expect records to be broken (or at least challenged) every season for the foreseeable future.

But there is almost always more to the story behind a great buck—more than just records and scores. There is “the story behind the story,” that unique sequence of events that weaves a tapestry of opportunities, successes, failures and relationships that define the best of our hunting experiences. The story of Dan Daigle’s 2012 Massachusetts archery record is certainly a case in point.

Hunter Profile: Dan Daigle
At 50 years old, Daigle is an avid and very experienced deer hunter who has been chasing whitetails for much of his hunting career. Almost all of Daigle’s 30-plus deer have been taken in central Massachusetts. Daigle’s first buck hit the ground in 1995, and it was worth the wait—a fantastic 140-inch 8-pointer taken with a shotgun.

By 2009, Daigle was a serious deer hunter with years of experience, finely honed scouting and hunting skills and access to some outstanding properties. That year, Daigle killed another great Worcester County buck with his shotgun—an 11-pointer that would mark the beginning of our story of the new state-record archery buck for this state.

Sadly, Daigle’s brother, Dave, passed away in 2007. Daigle lost not only a brother but also a hunting partner. His sister-in-law gave Daigle many of Dave’s hunting possessions, including his shotgun and many of his hunting accessories. Daigle could not bring himself to use any of the equipment until 2009, when he took out Dave’s shotgun for the firearms season.

While hunting from the ground on one of his favorite properties, Daigle shot the great 11-pointer mentioned earlier. It was his best buck to-date, and it was not lost on him that he shot the buck with Dave’s shotgun. That deer, and that hunt, carried a deep meaning for Daigle.

When he recovered the buck, he realized that the great deer had led him to a fantastic hunting spot. While not far from where he generally hunted, this was a perfect funnel in one of those areas that just “spoke to him.” It was a place that inspired confidence from the first moment he laid eyes on it. Daigle hunted the funnel from the ground during the 2010 gun season and felt so confident about the spot that he hung a stand there for the 2011 season, from which he killed a doe and spotted a 6-pointer.

Although Daigle had hunted the area several times since 2009 without seeing a big buck and had yet to catch a big buck there on his trail camera, the spot had such good sign and inspired so much confidence that he planned to hunt there again in 2012. And, of course, it held the memory of the buck he had killed with his brother’s shotgun. As far as Daigle was concerned, this was “the stand.”

The 2012 Season
Daigle’s 2012 archery season could not have started better. While hunting a different property in Worcester County, he arrowed a very nice 175-pound 9-pointer on October 25. It was his biggest buck to date with a bow. As thrilled as he was, Daigle could not wait to get back into the woods and was especially looking forward to hunting “the stand” for the first time that season. But he had to wait for the wind to be right. The first time he hunted “the stand” in 2012, he did not see any deer, but he did see a bobcat with a red squirrel in its mouth—just another sign that this place was special.

The second time Daigle hunted the stand he was rewarded with a great opportunity at another big 9-pointer. He missed it cleanly and, as you might imagine, he was very disappointed. However, that miss turned out to be a fortunate and very important event, because in Massachusetts you can only kill two bucks per season. Had he connected on the 9-pointer, Daigle would have been tagged out. Instead, he was more focused than ever and more confident than ever about “the stand.”

The Day of The Hunt: November 14, 2012
Daigle worked the morning of November 14, but he had planned to hunt that afternoon with his friend, Craig Bacon. Bacon and Daigle had been good friends for years, and he had started hunting with Craig after Dave died. Daigle checked the wind and knew it was perfect for “the stand.” He sent Bacon a text message early in the day and the duo planned to meet there. He left work a half-hour early, went home, showered and met Bacon. They went into the hunting spot together, but Bacon decided to sit in another stand 300 yards away.

On the way to his stand Daigle pulled out a bottle of Code Blue dominant buck scent that Dave had purchased before he passed away. For sentimental reasons, Daigle used it on a drag rag as he headed to his stand, then hung it near a mock scrape he had made a few weeks earlier.

Daigle was finally settled at 3:25 p.m. and texted Bacon to let him know. Someone on a farm about 500 yards away was running a chain saw, so Daigle sat quietly until about 3:45 p.m., when the noise stopped. After that, he did a series of bleats mixed with a few grunts.

At 4:10 p.m., Daigle bleated and grunted again, and as he stuck the grunt tube in his jacket, he heard a loud snap. At first, it seemed too loud to be a deer walking. Then Daigle realized it was a deer raking some trees with his antlers! Daigle’s heartbeat accelerated as he was now sure he heard a deer walking. His eyes followed the noise, and sure enough he saw a flicker of brown moving through the woods towards some hemlocks.

Daigle removed his bow from the hook as his eyes spotted what appeared to be a rack moving through the trees about 45 yards away. With his heart pounding, Daigle watched the buck emerge about 30 yards away at the edge of a small natural clearing. A giant buck had stopped there and was looking down towards Dan’s scrape dripper and scent rag. He was close enough for a shot but was quartering towards Daigle.

Although he knew the buck was huge, Daigle kept his eyes off the rack and focused on a spot behind his shoulder, praying the big buck would turn and present a shot. Simultaneously, he scanned ahead of the deer, looking for a good shooting lane. The buck stepped forward and then brought his back leg up and scratched under his chin at about 25 yards.

That’s when Daigle drew. He thought he had a perfect opening, but there was a small branch half way between him and the buck. He had to hold the draw and wait for the deer to move again. After what seemed like an eternity, the deer took another step. Daigle mouth-bleated and the buck stopped at 21 yards. He let an arrow fly.

Daigle saw the lighted nock penetrate just behind the front leg, and the buck whirled and kicked. He bounded once, and on the second bound Daigle got a clear view of the rack from directly behind and realized how huge this buck was! The wounded monster retreated exactly how he had arrived. Daigle heard branches snapping, then a loud single crash. He listened as the buck thrashed momentarily, and then the woods went silent.

Daigle assumed the buck was down, but he did not know for sure. His body shaking and his mind racing with adrenaline, Daigle hung his bow back up on the hook and sat down in disbelief. “The stand” had lived up to his expectations. At that moment, Daigle thought that he might have just killed a 160-class buck. Was he ever wrong…

The Recovery
Daigle immediately called Bacon, exclaiming that he had “shot a corker!” Bacon is an experienced hunter, and, upon hearing the excitement in Daigle’s voice, instructed him not to get down from his stand yet. But Daigle was so fired up that he told Craig he had to get down before he fell out the tree! He promised to wait for Bacon at the base of the tree.

Of course, he did not! Once down he packed everything up quietly and, while the fading light still provided some help, he tried to find his arrow. After looking in the wrong spot, he put on his headlamp. He re-aligned with the stand and finally found some hair and small spots of blood. He started looking for the arrow but could not find it.

Daigle marked the shot area with flagging tape and waited for Bacon. Once he arrived, Bacon found the arrow about 20 feet away, soaked with blood. They immediately assumed the arrow must have hit the opposite leg on exit and popped out when the buck kicked. When Bacon looked closely at the blood-covered arrow, he nodded knowingly and said; “You killed this deer!”

Bacon is an excellent deer tracker, and had helped Daigle with a tough tracking job on the buck he killed earlier in the year. Bacon knew (and so did Daigle) that the smartest thing to do was back out quietly and come back in an hour. Daigle, of course, was sure the buck was dead and could not be convinced to leave.

Despite the obvious risk, they pressed on. About 15 yards from the shot site, Bacon noticed a broken pine branch. In another 10-15 yards, the blood trail still consisted of drops and splashes. Then, after 40 yards on the trail, Bacon again tried to convince Daigle that they should back out.

Daigle told Bacon he knew he made a heart shot and did not want to leave. At first, Daigle grudgingly agreed to sit down and wait for an hour, but after just a few minutes, he could wait no longer, and the two men decided to slowly and carefully take up the trail. They came into some low laurel where Daigle found a bunch of blood on the laurel. They went to the end of the laurel and there, 25 yards ahead, Daigle spotted the buck lying down, with the giant rack sticking up. They found him!

After composing themselves, the two men took some photos, tagged the deer, phoned their friend Keith, and got a four-wheeler to haul the big buck out. The next morning, they checked the buck in and it officially weighed in at 201 pounds.

Later, as friends gathered and savored the moment, Bacon said to Daigle, “I wish your brother could be here, and I’m so proud to be part of this with you.” Daigle remembers thinking to himself that Dave was a big part of this, even if he was only with them in spirit.

Summary
The 16-point Daigle buck, scored by Boone & Crockett measurer Lonnie Desmarias, grossed a whopping 197 0/8 inches gross and netted 191 0/8 inches as a non-typical, breaking the existing Massachusetts state record by seven inches, according to the Northeast Big Buck Club records.

◄ Back

Next ►

Picture 1 of 37

NAW's Best Bucks of 2012

Editor’s Note: For more information about the Northeast Big Buck Club, or to purchase their latest record book with more than 10,000 of the Northeast’s best bucks, visit bigbuckclub.com or call (508) 752-8762.

For bowhunter Jim Hill, of Hebron, Ky., the 2011 season had been somewhat frustrating. Although he had seen numerous deer and taken several does, closing the deal on a mature buck had proved to be a difficult proposition.

“In early December, I began getting trail camera photos of an impressive 10-pointer with a super-wide spread that I estimated to be over 20 inches,” Hill recalled. “The buck was located on a farm I was quite familiar with, but because of other opportunities, I hadn’t spent any time hunting there that fall. The photos pointed out an obvious glitch in my strategy.”

Several days later, the hunter was positioned in a treestand along the edge of a very large, brushy thicket not far from the trail camera location. Often utilized as a bedding area, the thicket’s dense undergrowth included a mixture of honeysuckle, grapevines, sawbriars, saplings and cedars.

“About two hours after getting settled, I spotted antlers moving through the maze of limbs and leaves, heading in my direction,” Hill said. “As the buck got closer, I immediately recognized the wide 10-point rack. Walking straight toward me with its head lowered, the deer was an imposing sight. However, at 24 yards, the buck abruptly stopped, as its right antler became hung in a grapevine. Twisting its head from side to side in an attempt to free the antler, the deer only managed to entangle the opposite side.

“I could see the buck’s body stiffen and bow up as he strained to back up,” Hill said. “It was really an amazing sight, with the treetops swaying back and forth and branches and other debris falling everywhere. The struggle seemed to last a long time, but I’m sure it was probably only a matter of seconds. Eventually, one side of the rack broke free and the deer quickly twisted the other antler loose. Afterward, the buck stopped momentarily, alertly looked around, and then briskly walking back into the thicket.”

It would be an understatement to say that Hill experienced a unique and unforgettable observation of whitetail behavior. But perhaps more importantly, it also provided an opportunity for the hunter to more accurately gauge the buck’s age.

“I had every intention of taking the deer that day,” Hill said, “and probably would have, if its antler hadn’t gotten hung in the grapevine. No doubt, the buck was a great trophy, but after getting a close-up view of its body size and shape, it was readily apparent that the deer was younger than I had initially believed.”

Having observed numerous bucks during 25 years of bowhunting, Hill was convinced the buck’s potential for future growth was substantial. That belief ultimately swayed his decision to discontinue hunting the deer.

“There were other considerations that influenced my decision,” Hill said. “Gun season was over and only a few weeks of bow season remained. Additionally, the buck’s location was on a farm that was somewhat isolated, particularly from surrounding hunting pressure. While there was no guarantee the buck would be around the following fall, I was pretty confident of my chances.”

During the spring and summer of 2012, Hill limited his activities on the farm to widely spaced short visits. He particularly avoided entering the buck’s core area surrounding the big thicket.

“Basically, the only time I ever walked into the area around the thicket was to freshen a mineral lick I had established near a small creek or to change batteries and memory cards in the trail cameras,” Hill noted. “On those occasions, I always waited for a rainy day so that any scent I might leave would be quickly washed away.”

An early July photo of the buck, which Hill had aptly named the “Grapevine 10,” laid to rest any reservations he might have had about his December decision to stop hunting the deer. The image revealed a wide-antlered 10-point frame, similar to the 2011 rack. However, with several weeks remaining in the growing cycle, it was obvious the antlers were going to be much larger. In fact, the velvet rack already appeared as big as the deer’s shed antlers, which the hunter had found in late January.

“Photos taken about a month later in mid-August revealed a really amazing jump in rack size,” Hill said. “Obviously, all antlers look bigger in the velvet stage, but the additional growth in this case was definitely exceptional. Knowing the buck’s sheds had scored approximately 150, I estimated the rack to be approaching the 180-inch class.”

During the two weeks leading up to the opening of bow season on September 1, Grapevine 10 settled into a fairly predictable movement pattern. On approximately half of those mornings, the big whitetail was photographed at the same location, entering the thicket at daybreak.

“The buck was obviously feeding during the night in one of the agricultural fields on a nearby farm and then returning to the thicket at daybreak to bed down for the day,” Hill noted. “Everything really looked positive, and I had high hopes that I could take the deer within a few days.”

As many hunters have learned over the years, the only thing predictable about whitetails is that they are unpredictable. After a week of hunting, Hill hadn’t managed to get even a glimpse of the buck.

“It was frustrating because on several of the mornings, trail camera photos showed the buck at the same location shortly before daybreak,” Hill said. “The deer’s sudden change to a nocturnal movement pattern could not have come at a worse time.”

Unfortunately, the bowhunter’s frustration was only just beginning. Following the opening week of the season, the big deer completely disappeared. Days faded into weeks without a sighting or any additional trail camera photos.

“Under those types of situations, it’s only human nature to begin second-guessing what might have happened,” Hill said. “I am very meticulous about scent control and wind conditions, but I decided the deer must have somehow detected me. I moved completely out of the area surrounding the thicket and began sitting along the bordering field edges. The main idea was to spot the buck so I would have a better idea where to concentrate my efforts.

“Amazingly, over a two-week period, every other buck recorded by my trail cameras made an appearance, plus a couple more that were new deer. But the Grapevine 10 remained missing.”

Realizing it was entirely possible the buck had moved onto another farm, Hill spent a few sleepless nights around the middle of October. That’s when the statewide special two-day youth-only firearms season and two-day early muzzleloader season were held on back-to-back weekends.

“Because of the buck’s size, I knew the news would spread quickly if the deer was taken,” Hill noted. “Both weekends were agonizing but thankfully uneventful.”

Despite the fact that there had been no sign of the buck for nearly two months, Hill believed the deer was still using the area in and around the big thicket. He felt that, in all likelihood, the buck had maintained its nocturnal movement pattern. The sudden avoidance of trail camera locations was hard to explain but might have involved scent problems.

“Around the end of October, I began noticing a marked increase in buck movements,” Hill said. “Since early September, I had purposely stayed away from the big thicket, but with rut activity on the rise, I knew this would be the time to find out whether or not the buck was still in the area.

“During one of my rainy day outings in June, I placed a hang-on stand along a hillside bench, a short distance from where the buck had gotten hung in the grapevine. At the time, I honestly didn’t think I would use the stand, but I wanted to have another option in the event that I had not taken the deer prior to the rut. The only stipulation was that the site required a northerly wind.”

On October 28, after a fast moving weather system produced the steady north-northeasterly winds he was waiting for, Hill arrived at the farm early in the afternoon. Using a small rocky creek bed as a pathway up the densely wooded hillside, he made his way to the stand location on the bench.

“I was in position by about 3 p.m.,” Hill noted. “The undergrowth was much thicker than I remembered. I only had two shooting lanes out to approximately 18 yards. Everything else was out of the question.”

Shortly after Hill got settled, three does came up the hillside and passed directly under the stand. Thirty minutes later, the hunter spotted another doe as it emerged from the tangle of vines and honeysuckle about 30 yards down the hillside. Within seconds, directly behind the doe, there was additional movement as part of a large rack became visible in the brush.

“Initially, I could only see two or three tines and wasn’t really sure it was Grapevine 10,” Hill said. “But once I was able to determine the rack’s spread, there was no doubt in my mind. At 24 yards, the doe paused and the buck briefly mounted her. Afterward, she walked to within 7 yards of the stand and stopped, completely in the open. At that time, the buck was only 10 yards away, but there was no way I could get an arrow through the maze of limbs and vines.”

At full draw, the hunter waited for the buck to step into the open behind the doe. But neither deer exhibited any sign of moving, and Hill eventually had to ease the bow down.

“I continued to focus my attention on the doe because I knew she was the key to triggering the buck’s next move,” Hill said. “After what seemed like an eternity, the doe slowly turned and began to walk. I immediately drew the bow as the buck stepped forward to follow her. After waiting for just a moment until the deer entered the small opening where the doe had been standing, I softly mouth bleated to stop him, aimed and released.

“Because of all the branches and brush, I couldn’t see where the arrow hit, but the buck mule-kicked straight up, took a couple of steps and stopped, still watching the doe. Surprisingly, neither deer spooked, I suppose because of the thick cover. By then, I could see the hole in the buck’s shoulder and, as he continued walking toward the doe, a very visible blood trail.”

Amazingly, Hill had managed to remain relatively calm throughout the entire hunt, but with the successful end of a two-month quest within sight, his nerves began to unravel. Knowing he needed to wait a while before checking on the buck, he decided to call his wife, Nicole, but at that point, even operating a cell phone proved to be difficult.

After enduring another 30 minutes in the stand, Hill climbed down, picked up his arrow, and slowly began following the blood trail. Not surprisingly, it was a short walk of barely 60 yards to where the big whitetail was lying. Kneeling down and grasping the huge rack was an incredible moment the bowhunter will always remember.

In terms of both appearance and statistics, Hill’s great buck has a tremendous combination of width, tine length and antler mass. For example, main beams of over 27 inches form an antler spread of 23 4/8 inches outside and 21 1/8 inches inside. Four tines measure between 11 2/8 and 10 inches, and the eight circumference measurements average over 4 4/8 inches.

In regard to scoring, the symmetrical 10-point frame grosses 182 3/8, before netting a final outstanding typical Pope & Young score of 177 3/8. The buck stands as Kentucky’s top typical bow kill of 2012 and moves into fifth place on the state’s all-time list of Pope & Young typical whitetails.

◄ Back

Next ►

Picture 1 of 37

NAW's Best Bucks of 2012

It was October 7, 2012, and a cold front had pushed through the eastern Arkansas Delta, dropping the temperature into the mid-50s. The low country heat had hovered in the 70s and 80s for the previous weeks, and this was the break that Mike Miller, of Marion, Ark., was waiting for. Just 10 days prior, a familiar old buck had shown up on his trail camera, but, this year, the beast had sprung into an entirely new category of whitetail. The buck was a giant.

Perhaps this was the break that would mark a new era in Mike’s hunting career and his life. In a symbolic sense, it was a much-needed break for Mike after a decade of fighting for his life. He didn’t know it, but he was about to lay down Arkansas’ largest buck of the 2012-13 hunting season.

Two years earlier, in 2010, Mike had seen a narrow-racked buck with numerous stickers while hunting one of his favorite stands, located within 40 yards of the St. Francis River in Cross County. The buck passed through a shooting lane just minutes after Mike had shot a high 140-class class 9-pointer with his slug gun.

The unique buck got a free pass that day, but the image of the young deer stuck in Mike’s memory. He didn’t get any trail camera pictures of the deer that season, but in 2011 he recognized the buck as it tripped the trigger of his Bushnell camera more than once. However, the buck, which was an impressive 180-class whitetail at the time, was like a ghost, only appearing at night and randomly at that.

It was also during this time that Mike continued to live with the after effects of a body ravaged by leukemia. Diagnosed in 2002 at the age of 30, Mike fought for his life as the cancer relapsed three times after intense rounds of chemotherapy. During the struggle, the cancer spread through Mike’s bone marrow and into his spine, and his family began to fear for the worst.

In 2004, the doctors suggested a stem cell transplant in an attempt to save Mike’s life. This is a long and grueling process that is complicated by the difficulty in finding a perfect donor. However, God had figuratively given Mike an ace-in-the-hole—an identical twin brother! Mark was more than willing and was the perfect match for the life-saving treatment.

Growing up in Eastern Arkansas, Mike had always loved to hunt, even before he got sick. The doctors told him that he would likely be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life after the stem cell transplant. However, by God’s grace, Mike is able to walk on his own today and has been cancer-free since 2004.

However, the side effects of the battle have weakened him significantly, particularly in his physical stamina and eyesight, but this hasn’t kept him out the woods. Though his brother Mark is very much involved in his hunting, Mike scouts and hunts on his own. He has just been forced to find a new pace.

October 2012
In 2012, the Arkansas bow opener fell on September 15, and Mike didn’t have a target buck picked out for the season. It wasn’t until late September that the narrow-racked-sticker buck would appear for the third year in a row. However, his 2012 appearance was notably more dramatic than the last two. Gnarly antlers filled the frames of the trail camera pictures, and Mike knew the buck had exploded.

He was hunting a large piece of private farm property located inside the levy of the St. Francis River. The property was owned by a close friend, and Mike had hunted it for the last 20 years. Much of the cleared ground inside the levy is now in CRP, planted in water oaks and overcup oaks—the perfect habitat to incubate the maturation process of a low-country monarch.

Mark knew that Mike was having a difficult time shooting his Mathews bow from elevated positions, and he suggested that he shoot a crossbow in 2012. Then, as if by providence, Mike won a drawing for a $1,000 Bass Pro Shops gift card at a bass tournament in May 2012! Mike used the money to buy a TenPoint Turbo XLT crossbow. Unbeknownst to him, the second time he would carry it to the tree, he would drop the string on a giant.

Mike had built a box stand along the timbered banks of the St. Francis River overlooking a 15-acre CRP field where he had seen the big buck the year before. They had strategically cleared three shooting lanes, each approximately 10 yards wide, through the CRP and planted them in Mossy Oak Biologic’s Full Draw blend. Mike could see 200 yards in three different directions from the stand.

In late September, Mike dumped several hundred pounds of culled sweet potatoes, a crop grown in eastern Arkansas, within bow range of the box stand. Hunting over bait is legal in Arkansas and is a common practice that is misunderstood by many. Killing a mature buck over supplemental feed is a significant challenge, period—just like any other style of fair chase hunting.

Unknown to many, deer absolutely love sweet potatoes! The first pictures of the buck appeared in late September 2012, just days after the potatoes hit the dirt.

Mike had hunted the sweet potato stand the day before, on October 6, and had only seen one deer. He planned to hunt another stand on the following day, not wanting to pressure the “Sweet Potato Buck.” Mike is not a novice hunter, and he understood that pressuring the deer would be a major mistake. However, because of the recent rains and Mike’s inability to walk long distances, he chose to hunt the stand that evening because of the ease of access. A high-pressure system had moved in and the evening just felt right.

Mike didn’t know it, but as he drove onto the property and unloaded his ATV that afternoon, the buck was making his first-ever daytime appearance in front of his camera. At 4:07 p.m. on October 7, the camera snapped a picture of the giant, trash-horned buck munching on sweet potatoes within 20 yards of the stand while Mike was less than a mile away getting his gear ready!

The deer on the property are familiar with human activity because of all the farming activity in the area. Mike uses this to his advantage and out of necessity, when he drives his ATV to the stand and parks within 40 yards. Behind the stand was a significant drop-off leading to the river. Mike parks out of sight and downwind of the stand.

Mike likely bumped the big deer back into the CRP when he drove in, but the familiar sound of the gas engine didn’t spook him very far. Mike climbed into his box stand at 4:20 p.m.

“It was about 5:30 p.m. when I heard two bucks sparring in the CRP,” Mike recalled. “Within a few minutes, a lone buck popped out into the shooting lane 100 yards away and made his way down the lane in front of the stand. Following the young buck was a second deer, and they made their way into the potatoes.”

By now, it was 5:45 p.m. and Mike noticed more movement about 200 yards away, straight in front of the stand. “My eyes aren’t that good, but I thought I saw a deer stick his head out of the CRP and look directly down the shooting lane toward the stand,” Mike said. “I was beginning to doubt myself after several minutes of the deer not moving, but then I saw his ear twitch. The deer then stepped out into the shooting lane followed by two more bucks and cautiously started to walk towards me. When he got to about 150 yards, I could tell that it was the big buck.”

The Sweet Potato Buck took his time covering the 150 yards down the open shooting lane.

“The buck was so cautious that I dipped my head and would occasionally look under the bill of my hat as he came in,” Mike said. “My crossbow was in my lap and I was afraid to move it.”

Finally, after a grueling 15 minutes, the buck made his way into shooting range, cautiously approaching the sweet potatoes while munching on the Biologic. However, Mike’s bow was still in his lap! The big buck had the two other smaller bucks with him and three pairs of cautious eyes had him afraid to move.

“I was sitting there with the buck in range but afraid to move,” Mike explained. “About that time, I heard gravel popping. A truck was driving down the levy several hundred yards in front of the stand. Every one of the deer stopped and turned to look back towards the noise, and when they did, they all turned broadside at 25 yards. I pulled up the crossbow and shot!”

The two-blade Rage broadhead hit slightly high but behind the shoulder. The shot looked good to Mike. He listened as the buck busted out into the CRP but never heard him fall. Immediately, Mike texted his brother Mark, who was hunting on the farm some distance away. Mark warned Mike to stay in the tree until he and Lance, a friend and the landowner, got there.

After they arrived and Mike climbed down, they immediately found the crossbow bolt stuck in the ground. “The arrow wasn’t coated in blood like you would like,” he said. “We started looking around and we couldn’t find any blood. Finally my brother found a speck going into the CRP.

It took him 30-40 minutes to trail 40 yards; the buck wasn’t bleeding at all. Finally, we got up to a spot 100 yards into the CRP and found where the buck had stopped and there was a pool of blood. From there, he ran another 50 yards and piled up. The shot was a little high and he had to fill up with blood.”

When the brothers and Lance reached the giant buck, they couldn’t believe their eyes. First of all, the buck had superb mass and the rack was covered in points! The brow tines were extremely tall and the buck had two droptines! However, the most notable trait was the buck’s main beams crossed each other in front. The buck was obviously mature, with a live weight of 219-pounds, 21 scorable points and a net non-typical score of 215 6/8 inches.

The flood of emotions that overtook the men as they admired the buck was overwhelming, especially, considering all the factors that played into the overarching picture of the hunt. The first and most significant factor was that Mike was still alive and healthy enough to hunt after his struggle with leukemia.

Secondly, it was extraordinary that a buck of this caliber even existed in the area Mike was hunting. The region is known for big deer, but this was by far the biggest they had ever hunted. Third, the buck, previously only seen at night, made his first daytime appearance in 2012 that very day! Finally, Mike was able to share the recovery with his twin brother, who had played a significant role in saving his life.

During Mike’s treatment, he spent 356 days in the hospital and had more than 50 spinal tap chemotherapy treatments. “I was just a normal 30-year-old,” Mike recalled. “Played golf, softball and hunted. Never went to the doctor and never got sick! I didn’t even really understand what leukemia was until I was diagnosed with it. My world changed over night.”

Despite the doctors’ predictions, Mike has overcome tremendous odds and gives all the credit for his life, his current stable health and the Sweet Potato Buck to God. Mike’s body may be weaker than it once was, but his mind and heart are strong and his attitude toward life is extremely positive. He is passionate about his family, his hunting and his faith. A 200-inch-plus whitetail has never fallen to a more deserving hunter.

◄ Back

Next ►

Picture 1 of 37

NAW's Best Bucks of 2012

Jeremy Schmeidler of Hays, Kan., was hooked on bowhunting from the very first time he sat in a tree, when his lifelong friend and college baseball teammate, Darris Meitler, first took him bowhunting in 1999. An athlete at heart, Jeremy found bowhunting to be just the right sport to feed his competitive needs when a back injury ended his college baseball career.

After years of hunting other people’s property, Jeremy finally got his own in 2010, when he purchased a 750-acre property consisting of river bottom cover and cropland. He immediately planted multiple food plots, his favorite crop being milo.

“If you get a good stand of milo, it provides both good cover and a food source and is in my opinion one of the biggest draws a property could have year-round to hold deer,” Jeremy said.

He also plants wheat and oats and mixes in a few commercial blends to give the deer some variety, as well as supplementing their protein intake with Buck Nuggets, pellets containing 26 percent protein. Jeremy uses the supplement through the winter months when food is scarce and deer are worn down, all the way through the main antler growing months of June and July.

“I believe that if the deer are healthier come April, when their racks start to grow, more of a deer’s nutritional health can go toward antler development,” Jeremy explained.

He is also obsessed with trail cameras, running them throughout all the months bucks are carrying headgear, to inventory bucks and help direct management decisions.

“I prefer to put them in non-invasive spots, so that checking them once a week will not affect deer movement or bedding areas,” Jeremy explained. “Monitoring field edges in the summer seems to be the ticket for taking an inventory on bucks.”

“Checking trail cameras is like Christmas once a week for me,” Jeremy added. “The suspense of wondering what is on those cards is hardly bearable, so you can imagine my excitement on May 1, when I got a picture of a buck with main beams not much past his brow tines with super mass and some abnormal points starting to grow.”

Jeremy immediately emailed the photo to his bowhunting partner, Jeff Bieker.

“That buck looks like he could grow some wild stuff,” Jeff said to Jeremy.

“A few weeks later, Jeff and I were looking over several more trail camera photos of this buck and that’s when we named him ‘Wild Thing,’” Jeremy explained.

Jeremy, Darris, Jeff and several other buddies continued to monitor Wild Thing’s progress over the next several months. By late June, the group estimated the buck was already sporting about 170 inches of antler, and it was obvious to all of them that this whitetail was turning into something special.

“Through July, Wild Thing seemed to put on 10 inches a week,” Jeremy recalled. “By the time the first week of August rolled around, Wild Thing was a bona fide giant, and we were all confident he would top the 200-inch mark. He was without a doubt the biggest animal that I had ever crossed paths with. I made up my mind that he was the only buck I would pursue. Yet in the back of my mind, I figured I was probably setting myself up for a season of disappointment.”

Jeremy didn’t know of the buck’s existence before 2012. Although there is a chance the buck had always been on his property, Jeremy’s numerous trail cameras never revealed the buck’s presence during the previous 2011 season.

Jeremy believes the buck probably strayed from its core area to his own property for two reasons. First, Kansas experienced severe drought in 2012, so many of the smaller water sources whitetails relied on were dried up. The river on Jeremy’s property acted as a reliable water source. Second, Jeremy’s ground had a healthy stand of milo when many others in the area did not, and it proved to be a popular food source for the deer.

In mid-August, Jeremy talked with Dan Cross and Bill McCall with the TV show Full Draw Adventures, which airs on Sportsman Channel. Jeremy had teamed up with Full Draw Adventures a year earlier, and after sharing an update and texting pictures of Wild Thing to Bill, the TV show host and producer decided to dedicate whatever time and resources Jeremy needed to help kill the buck and hopefully capture it all on film.

Bill’s TV editor, Mike Devine, also does some videography for the show, and Bill arranged for Mike to drive up from his home in Oklahoma to film Jeremy’s pursuit of the buck.

“I explained to them that I didn’t feel we needed to get excited until the second week of September, when I would know if Wild Thing was still hanging around and staying on his summer feeding pattern,” Jeremy explained. “The beauty of Kansas, in my opinion, is that there are no high fences or boundaries for the deer. You can kill a giant on any property at any time. The bad news is that the buck of your dreams can change patterns and disappear overnight.”

But Jeremy continued capturing Wild Thing on his trail cameras from early to mid-September, recording the date, time, and location everywhere Wild Thing showed himself.

Further, Jeremy and Jeff took turns watching fields in the evenings for the two weeks leading up to season. They pinpointed three different bedding areas Wild Thing was using. The bowhunters had multiple treestand setups in the timber, but felt that penetrating the woods was too risky, at least for the first week.

“We wanted Wild Thing to come to us,” Jeremy explained. “With deer on the food source and heading to bed, morning hunts were out of the question. We had no clean way in and out for a morning ambush, nor could we accurately predict exactly where Wild Thing would bed or if the buck was even on his feet in the morning. One blown morning and the party was probably over.”

They decided to hunt the transition areas and field edges in the evening and would exit the field by having Jeff drive the deer off the field with his pickup when he picked up the hunter and cameraman. They set up three ground blinds that would be effective for almost any wind direction Mother Nature threw at them. With multiple blind options, a solid game plan and unseasonably cool weather, Jeremy felt really good about their chances.

Opening day of the Kansas bow season was September 17. They had a good idea which field Wild Thing would show up in, but the wind was bad for that field so they selected a blind in a different field. Just as they figured, Wild Thing showed up in the field they weren’t in. Jeff watched the buck that evening but the buck stayed out of range.

On the second evening, Jeremy and Mike set up in the cover just off the field where Jeff saw Wild Thing the night before. They had watched 25 deer pass by when Wild Thing showed up with 30 minutes of shooting light left! The monster buck circled their blind at 20 yards, but as he turned to approach the field he got nervous and hesitated.

“I came to full draw as soon as the buck got into my blind spot,” Jeremy recalled. “Mike was sitting on my right filming, and Wild Thing was only 2-3 steps away from giving me a clear shot. With the cooler air setting in, the thermals sank to the spot the buck used to approach the field. Wild Thing took a step back and stared at our blind.

He decided to walk straight away from us to about 30 yards and lip curled, but I didn’t have a good shot. At this point, he smelled us and there is no doubt in my mind that had we not had two Ozonics units in the blind with us, he would have bailed when he initially got downwind of us. He never snorted or stomped, he just walked straight away from us and never presented me with a real solid shot angle.”

The night ended with Wild Thing and three other bucks passing their blind within 20 yards. Jeremy and Mike went home and watched the footage. Second-guesses filled the hunter’s head, and he wondered if he blew the only chance he would get at the buck he had targeted since the summer.

On the fifth straight night of hunting, a heavy-horned 14-point buck with triple brow tines on each side that they called “Triple Threat” presented Jeremy with a 25-yard shot.

“The buck was a brute, and as the buck stood there, I sat in the blind with my release on the string but I just couldn’t get myself to draw back,” Jeremy said. “I estimated him to be a gross Booner and he would have been my biggest buck ever, but with Wild Thing walking around, I just couldn’t do it.”

Jeremy and Mike hunted every evening for the first eight days of the season, playing cat and mouse with Wild Thing. Every time they were on one side of the property, Wild Thing would show up on the other side. The big buck had strayed from the consistent patterns he followed right up through the close encounter on the second evening, and Jeremy was left scratching his head.

“Jeff is a smart hunter and always has solid advice for formulating a game plan,” Jeremy said. “Jeff suggested that the buck might have me patterned. Then it clicked. I think Jeff might have been right. We figured that the buck might have been seeing our truck as we drove along the access road to our parking spot every afternoon, tipping the buck off to our presence. I suggested to Mike that we take a different way into the blind.”

For their ninth straight evening hunt, Jeremy and Mike wanted to hunt the same blind where they had their first encounter with Wild Thing, but the wind direction was bad, so they set up inside an old, small stone building near the edge of the field. They set their blind up within the old house to minimize their scent, fired up two Ozonics units and began their sit.

Throughout the evening, the pair had several bucks and does walk within 10 yards straight downwind of their blind. Around 7:30 p.m., a 150-inch buck walked by at just 10 yards. As Mike looked out behind the blind for any deer following the buck, Jeremy was watching out the front and spotted Wild Thing at only 8-10 yards quartering away!

Jeremy whispered to Mike “there he is” and immediately came to full draw with his Mathews bow. Mike spotted the buck and wheeled the camera around and hit the record button on his video camera.

“I always say that five seconds can change your season, but this hunt went down in about three,” Jeremy recalled. “Hunting inside that house limited our field of view and reaction time if deer came in from our blind side.

“Mike no more than got the camera on him and I sent the Carbon Express arrow on its way and drilled him. Mike has been filming hunts for 15 years. I don’t think many guys could have captured that shot on film. His split-second reaction and knowing his equipment helped capture a shot that was probably going to happen whether he was on the deer or not.”

The pair watched the buck bolt off, jump a fence, and run out of sight. Jeremy and Mike felt the shot was good, but they decided to give the buck a little time while they went back and checked the footage. Jeremy stepped off the shot distance at a mere 11 yards!

Jeremy sent a text message to Jeff, who was hunting the other side of the property, where they had patterned a big buck they called “Mickey.” Jeremy’s text to Jeff simply read, “WHHHHAAAAMMMMMY!”

Within minutes, Jeff responded with his own text that said, “I just stroked Mickey!” Jeremy and Mike helped Jeff recover Mickey, a huge buck grossing almost 173 inches with G-2s measuring over 14 inches!

With help from Jeremy’s two young boys, Drew and Ty, the group then headed out to recover Wild Thing. They found the monster lying dead just 30 yards from where they saw him jump the fence. The four-month quest for Wild Thing was over, and Jeremy wrapped his hands around what he knew was a 200-inch-plus giant.

This buck has an amazing set of antlers. On top of a 5×6 typical frame, the buck sports 11 non-typical points, including matching drop tines growing off each side just above the bases.

The Jeremy Schmeidler buck has 59 inches of abnormal growth help boost his net non-typical score to a whopping 223 inches!

The entire story of Wild Thing, from the point Jeremy started getting trail camera camera photos of the buck all the way through the actual hunt, will be featured in the episode of Full Draw Adventures airing at 6:30 p.m. Eastern on Saturday, July 27, 2013, on Sportsman Channel.

In an interesting side story, the shot Jeremy passed up on Triple Threat in order to keep his chances alive with Wild Thing, ended up turning out great for Bill McCall. Bill ended up taking “Triple Threat” with his bow on November 17, after an exciting five-hour stalk. The buck unofficially grossed 174 inches, and that hunt will also be featured in an episode of Full Draw Adventures.

Nine straight days of hard, smart hunting paid off big for Jeremy, and getting to share that evening’s success with good friend Jeff Bieker made it even more special.

“The evening of September 25, 2012, was truly a magical evening,” Jeremy said. “For one night out in the woods, luck was on the side of a couple of bowhunters.”

◄ Back

Next ►

Picture 1 of 37

NAW's Best Bucks of 2012

Midway through my third hour in the stand, I decided I had had enough swaying back and forth for one day. It was October 19 in northwest Missouri, and though the conditions weren’t favorable for deer movement—or hunting for that matter—blustery winds and an incoming fall thunderstorm were sure to help mask some mid-season scouting.

It was my first full season hunting this farm, and I was far from knowing all the travel habits of the local deer. I descended from my stand, and I decided to walk up toward the property line to check signs around the neighboring cornfield. As I approached the fence, I caught a whiff of a familiar smell. Although I thought it was a bit early for bucks to be in that phase, there was no mistaking the smell of a rutting buck.

I couldn’t help but wonder where the odor was originating. There wasn’t much cover on the fence line, and I was much too far from the wooded ditch in the middle of the cornfield to be able to smell a buck bedded there. Then I noticed the bare ground under a pin oak tree along the edge of the cornfield. I didn’t have permission on the property to approach the scrapes, but the dark dirt in the middle of them signified they were fresh, as did the odor they sent downwind. I decided I would hang a trail camera facing them in hopes of catching future visits from the buck or bucks responsible.

I started walking east with the fence to locate entry and exit points to the field. As I neared the end of the cornfield, something caught my eye to my left. I looked up to see a huge buck that I bumped running away from me and heading for the wooded draw. He was bedded in one of two narrow grass ditches that began at the end of the timbered draw and made a “Y” shape in the eastern half of the cornfield.

His antlers blended in with the brown grass behind him, but I saw enough to know he was a good deer. I later described him to friends and family as having tremendous tine length, chocolate coloration, and plenty of mass, albeit with a spread that couldn’t have been 15 inches. Thus, he was given the name “Hightower.”

As the storm approached, I hurried back to my truck for the trail camera, set it facing the scrapes and left for the day, my hopes high for getting a better look at that buck via pictures.

The morning of October 26 found me in what I predicted would be the best stand on the property. Based on observations of deer movement from another stand location the previous year, I had moved a set approximately 150 yards north of its previous position. It was in a narrow strip of timber stemming out from a now dried-up pond. Deer seemed to utilize this area as a travel corridor going to and from several bedding areas. With great visibility in short CRP grass on both sides of the stand, I felt it would be a great place to at least see trolling bucks and perhaps be able to call them in.

I wasn’t disappointed during the first day in that stand. I laid eyes on eight different bucks that morning, including a close encounter with a triple-beamed buck my son later named “Gravedigger.” Had the cards played out right, I would have gladly arrowed that buck. But as it happens so many times when people attempt to film themselves bowhunting, I just couldn’t put it all together.

Throughout the morning, I watched all eight bucks and several does work a scrape under an oak tree approximately 150 yards from my stand. I decided that tree needed a camera as well. The next day, I went in and hung a trail camera overlooking that scrape as well.

That evening, I hunted a stand on the other end of the farm, and my father hunted a stand near that cornfield. I asked him to switch the cards out in that camera on the fence line when he exited that evening. Later that night, we sat on his couch and pulled up the pictures from the card. We started scrolling through them, and there he was—Hightower! I did a very poor job containing my excitement and eventually I drove my mother to the other room, frustrated because she couldn’t hear her television show.

There was no mistaking Hightower because of his dimensions, but I had no clue that he carried so much “trash” on his frame. I remember my dad asking me, “How in the world couldn’t you see all that?” I told him the buck was running away from me and his rack blended in with the grass he was running beside.

I estimated the buck had around 30 points based on what I could see in the photos. It’s safe to say that those trail camera pictures began a four-day obsession with this extraordinary buck. I couldn’t get that deer out of my head. His pictures clogged my mind continuously in the days to follow. One picture became my screensaver on my phone and computer.

◄ Back

Next ►

Picture 1 of 37

NAW's Best Bucks of 2012

Despite having gotten photos of him, I couldn’t help but realize the reality of the situation. To stay grounded, I kept telling myself that deer like this don’t exist everywhere and all the pictures were between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. I wasn’t even sure he was actually living on this particular farm or if this was just an overnight travel pattern for him.

I felt if he was living on the farm I hunted, my best chance to lay eyes on him would be out of the aforementioned stand. It was centrally located in a section of the farm that had several bedding areas nearby, and I thought perhaps I could catch him once the rut revved up a bit. However, I looked ahead at the forecast and it called for southerly winds for the next three days, so hunting that particular stand was out. My next day in the stand was the morning of October 30.

I hunted less than a mile away at the other end of the property, where a southeast wind was perfect. I had an encounter right after daylight with a 165-inch 10-pointer that was chasing a doe. Though Hightower was still stuck in my head, I wasn’t even sure he lived on the ground I was hunting.

Therefore, I hadn’t narrowed my sights on him alone, yet. But as luck would have it, I didn’t have my release on, so I had to watch the giant 10-pointer trot out of my life. Now there were two consecutive times in the tree when I had made mistakes that had cost me exceptional deer, and I couldn’t give you a reason why on either of them. Still, I wasn’t as upset as I typically would be, most likely because visions of Hightower were still running through my head.

I climbed out of my tree that morning excited, rather than deflated, knowing I was going to go check my trail cameras again. I got to the first camera on the fence line and it read zero pictures, and my disappointment set in. The camera was activating but not saving pictures. After a long phone conversation with the manufacturer, I realized I was to blame, so I reset the camera and headed over to check the other camera. I could hardly get home fast enough to see the pictures. I silently prayed that I would have just one picture of him in hopes of figuring out his pattern.

My prayers were answered. The previous day, the camera had captured Hightower tending to his scrape. In all, there were eight more pictures of him on the previous day. Even though they were all taken at night, the photos had been taken much later than the others I had received, leading me to believe the buck was traveling much of the farm and, perhaps, using it as his core area. I immediately checked the forecast for the next day and smiled ear to ear when I saw the northwest wind prediction.

The stage was set. I called my friend Josh and told him about the pictures, and he didn’t hesitate to volunteer to film the hunt. I told him that something felt right about the next morning’s hunt.

What followed was essentially a sleepless night. But Halloween morning dawned special for me. I had lost a good friend and hunting buddy a few weeks before in a motorcycle accident and had previously dedicated the hunting season to him. I woke up feeling like Brandin was sitting next to me, telling me it was going to be a great hunt. I posted on my Facebook page that morning how I was feeling and couldn’t help but sense that Brandin was going to be in that tree with Josh and me.

Filming the pre-hunt footage on the drive to the property, I felt Brandin’s presence more than ever and mentioned on video that it was going to be a special morning. I was after one particular deer, and I simply knew I was going to lay eyes on him that morning. As we were driving up the gravel road next to the property to park, I looked ahead and spotted a buck in the neighbor’s field headed for the road in front of us.

It was none other than Hightower, and he crossed the road in front of my truck at 60 yards. It was only 6:03 a.m., and he was approximately 600 yards from the stand set we were about to climb into. It was as though Brandin had nudged my shoulder and said, “I told you so!”

We got settled in the stand about 45 minutes later. I intended on using a buck and doe decoy setup, but I had forgotten the stake for the buck at home so I used a doe only. I typically don’t like doing that because of resident does reactions to a single doe, but I didn’t have a choice that morning.

Does started filtering through about 8:45 a.m. and, as I suspected, did not like the presence of the strange doe. We had five does in front of us for a while, then another doe and her fawn come trotting with the tails up. I told Josh that they were probably chased out of there by a buck. With seven does now showing their disapproval of my decoy, we heard a couple of grunts from the patch of timber north of us. Shortly after, the does trotted off after finally having enough of the new girl in town.

A big 8-pointer walked out just north of us, but he was acting nervous. He kept staring from my decoy to a coyote that had come in and to the north where the does came from. I was unsure why he was acting that way, as I knew he couldn’t smell us. He started walking away, staring into the patch of timber. Finally, he trotted off to the east. I looked up to see Hightower walking out of that very patch. He seemed to be scent-checking where the does had come through but started walking in our direction.

The field sloped towards us a bit, so I knew he would have to hit the high spot to see my decoy. Once he did, he angled right towards her. I had ranged a particular shadow in the field at 40 yards and told my cameraman I would take him at that distance if need be. He stopped momentarily to look at her, and as he started to walk again, he put his head down slightly and I came to full draw.

He stopped again at 31 yards. Fearing that he would come any closer and the trees would hinder a shot opportunity, I elected to take the shot. The arrow flew true and as he turned to run off, blood began pouring out of him. I knew my quest for Hightower was over.

All I could do was put my arms up and thank the good Lord and my buddy Brandin for the opportunity to harvest such an animal. He ran about 150 yards before tipping over just 12 yards behind the trail camera that had taken his picture two days before. After the mandatory 60-day drying period, he was officially scored at 214 gross inches and 202 6/8 net. He is one of a short list of free-range whitetails scoring over 200 inches to be killed on film.

Thirty-five years of bowhunting have taught Bill Ullrich a few things about chasing whitetails. After a few years of making a lot of mistakes, you reach a level of knowledge that moves you as a hunter to a level of wanting to challenge the oldest and smartest buck in the woods.

There is another factor, however, that even experienced hunters all too often overlook—luck. If you haven’t said it yourself, chances are you’ve heard a hunter say, “I’ll take luck anytime,” or “the harder I work, the luckier I get.” Sometimes what we call “luck” is simply slowing down long enough to listen to that small voice in the back of your head that says “turn right” or “turn left.”

On October 26, 2012, Bill had made up his mind to take off work early to spend an afternoon in the woods, and he knew exactly which tree he was headed for that afternoon. He was almost to the tree when something told him he needed to turn around and, instead, opt for a tried and true setup he had long-ago named the “good luck tree.”

“I had already walked past the tree,” Bill said, “and normally the last thing a hunter should do is backtrack. This just puts more scent on the ground past your stand. But it was just one of those feelings you get as a hunter sometimes.”

One hour and ten minutes later, he realized that was the best decision he had ever made, as he watched his arrow bury to the nock in the largest whitetail buck he had ever shot at.

The 2011 archery season had been a good one for Bill, and he had managed to harvest two respectable bucks. One of the bucks was a 9-pointer that scored in the 140s, and the other buck, taken later in the season, was a 12-pointer that scored in the 130s. After using both of his buck tags, Bill had resigned the late-season for doe management.

During one particular doe hunt, he just happened to look over his shoulder at the right time and saw a giant buck 50 yards away. He only got a glimpse of the buck as it disappeared into heavy brush, but he immediately knew two things. First, the buck was the biggest deer he had ever seen in the woods, and second, he knew where he would be hunting next season.

When the 2012 archery season arrived, Bill set out a couple of trail cameras on the relatively small piece of property he hunts in Peoria County, Ill. He makes it a habit to stay out of the woods until just before Halloween, and therefore, he had not checked the trail cameras for a couple of weeks. Since Bill hunts a small area, he does not want to spook deer early in the season.

Experience has taught him that on this particular piece of property, the last week of October seems to flip the switch and a lot of the bucks on adjacent properties suddenly start showing up on his hunting area in search of does. By the third week of October, he did not have any “shooter” bucks on his cameras. This did not really bother Bill, since he knew that the older bucks probably wouldn’t start showing up until the rut kicked in.

On Friday, October 26, Bill took off work at 2 p.m. He immediately drove to his hunting property and proceeded to go through his normal routine of getting ready to hunt. He knew that the wind was perfect for the area he hunted, and he changed into his hunting clothes, which had been recently washed with scent-free soap. He sprayed everything down with scent-free spray, grabbed his climber treestand and headed for the woods.

Placed strategically within the timber was a small food plot in which Bill had planted turnips in mid-summer. Even though there had been a drought during the summer of 2012, late summer rain had somehow resulted in a pretty good stand of turnips. On this particular day, Bill walked past the food plot and past the “good luck tree” where he had taken other bucks and headed for the back of the property. When he was about halfway to the other tree, he suddenly got the feeling that he needed to return to the “good luck tree.”

Paying credence to his instinct, Bill turned around and backtracked to the setup. By about 2:30 p.m., Bill had situated his Lone Wolf climber in the tree and was situated approximately 24 feet off the ground. Needless to say, after walking all that way and ascending the tree, he was soaked with sweat. Bill was so overheated by the time he was set up in the tree that he proceeded to remove a layer of clothing, trying to cool down before prime time arrived that evening.

Even though Bill was set up at the bottom of a ridge, a consistent breeze was blowing that evening, and just as he was considering putting his jacket back on, three does arrived on the scene. They proceeded to bed down 50 yards away, near the foot plot. Bill slowly and quietly managed to put his outer layer of clothing back on without spooking the bedded does. Ten minutes later, another doe appeared about halfway between his stand and the first trio of does. Bill ranged the doe at 35 yards, just for a point of reference. The doe moved away totally unaware of his presence.

It had only been 10-15 minutes since he spotted the last doe when movement caught Bill’s eye. A deer was approaching along the same trail the doe had been on, and Bill could barely make out antlers. By the time he had picked up his bow, the buck was close enough that Bill got a good look at him. In a split second, Bill could tell the buck was mature. He immediately reminded himself to ignore the antlers and focus on the shot.

As Bill came to full draw, the buck was quartering towards him and he picked up on the movement. The buck turned to look up at Bill but did not move. Bill lined the sight pin tight against the buck’s shoulder and released the arrow. The buck was standing in the exact spot where he had ranged the doe—35 yards.

The Carbon Express arrow, tipped with a Rocket broadhead, buried to the nock, penetrating the full length of the shaft. The buck turned and ran, then stopped about 30 yards away. Bill tried to find a hole through the brush for a follow-up shot at the buck, but there was too much brush in the way. He quietly watched the buck stand in one spot for 10-15 minutes. Then the buck turned and slowly walked out of sight.

The shot took place around 3:40 p.m., and Bill had made up his mind that he was not getting down from the tree until 5 p.m. As 5 p.m. approached, Bill couldn’t stand it any longer. He slowly and quietly got down from the tree and proceeded to where the buck had been standing at the shot. Thirty yards away, he found good blood pooled in the spot where the buck had stood for 10-15 minutes.

At this point it had been approximately an hour and a half since the shot. Bill eased over the crest of the hill where he had last seen the buck and saw a blow-down just below him. Suddenly, he saw movement in the big blow-down. The buck had stood up and was walking uphill very slowly.

With no shot opportunity, Bill watched as the buck crested the top of the hill, stopped and bedded down. Earlier, Bill had called his son, Matt, and as Bill sat quietly watching the bedded buck, Matt arrived. They both sat and watched the bedded buck, determined not to jump him again. After several minutes, the buck got to his feet and slowly moved over the crest of the hill, just out of sight.

Bill and Matt watched the area for another half-hour, then slowly climbed the hill, trying to be as quiet as possible. When they had crested the hill, they saw the buck bedded, and immediately it stood up and slowly moved off. At this point, Bill and his son very quickly backed down the hill and left the woods.

Thus began a long, sleepless night for Bill. By daylight on Saturday morning, Bill and his son were headed back to the spot where they had last seen the buck. They knew the exact spot where they had seen the buck get up just before they left the timber. When they arrived at that spot there was no blood. They slowly began to move down the ridge in the direction the buck had headed. Suddenly, only 60 yards from where they had last seen the buck, they both saw antlers.

Bill eased toward the buck very quietly, with another arrow nocked, but it rapidly became obvious that the buck was down for good this time. “I was in shock,” Bill said. “I couldn’t believe the size of the antlers.”

Not only were the antlers huge, the buck’s body was also very large. “By the time we dragged the deer to the base of the hill, and then to the truck, it was amazing how much weight that buck gained,” Bill joked.

The buck was officially measured at the Illinois Deer Classic by Boone and Crockett measurer Matt Staser. With 31 measurable points, Bill’s buck tallied a net non-typical score of 220 1/8 inches.

“I knew it was a good buck when I shot him,” Bill said, “but I had no idea that it would be my buck of a lifetime.”

◄ Back

Next ►

Picture 1 of 37

NAW's Best Bucks of 2012

For as long as I can remember, hunting whitetails has been more than a pastime. It’s simply been my life.

Chasing mature bucks was not just something we did, but something that defined who we were. The whitetail woods is where I’ve always felt at home, and my heroes have always been deer hunters.

My father was a man who just understood whitetails. He could walk onto a property, survey the lay of the land and walk over to a tree and say, “This one, Deaner. Get the stands. This is the tree to set up in.” It seemed effortless for him. Year after year, I watched my dad take fantastic bucks. By the age of 55, he had some 35 Pope & Young whitetails to his credit, but Number 36 was the most special of all of his P&Y bucks to me.

By that time, I was filming our own hunts, or at least trying to film them. That year, on a cold November afternoon, everything was perfect. It was just one of “those days.” That evening, I filmed my father take a tremendous, old 160-class 4×4 with his bow. My father never set foot in the whitetail woods again. Shortly after sharing that hunt with me, at far too young an age, my hero passed away. My father spent his life in the deer woods and was one of the most successful whitetail bowhunters I have ever known, but in all his years, he had never had an opportunity at a truly “once-in-a-lifetime” whitetail.

The following deer season without dad was difficult, but that just drove me to spend more time in the woods hunting, continuing to live our passion. I was hunting with my dad’s old friend, Steve Csizmar. Like my father, Steve’s passion was the deer themselves—not just the size of the rack or the score, but a love and appreciation for this incredible animal.

That same appreciation led me back to filming, so that I could share with others what we loved so much. I was fortunate enough to have a good friend, Jason Peterson, who produces a television show called “Hunting Canada and Beyond.” As my passion for filming grew, Steve and I decided we wanted to film a whitetail bowhunting DVD, and Jason had the knowledge to guide us through the process. Two years later, we produced a video called “Full Draw Whitetails.”

The more we filmed, the more I loved it, so Jason began airing our deer hunts on his TV show, but I was filming more hunts that he had room for. Before long, we all teamed up to build a dedicated whitetail hunting show that was to not be based on seeing how many outfitters we could hunt with in a season, but rather to showcase our hunts, from start to finish, sometimes spanning years.

The concept was to capture the entire process—knocking on doors for permission to hunt land, scouting, setting up, passing up bucks year after year and sharing all our successes (and failures), while trying to capture the biggest whitetails ever hunted on film.

Nearly a year later to the day, the first season of “Canadian Whitetail Television” aired in Canada, featuring two deer over 200 inches and multiple other great, old bucks. Since that rookie year, the show has continued to grow in leaps and bounds, with its roots still based in hunting big, old, mature whitetails and telling the stories that go with them.

In 2009, we had started having encounters and getting trail camera photos of a small 4×4 whose back tines were a little bladed. The buck was likely a 3-year-old but nothing overly special. He was just like dozens of different young bucks we would see every year. We carried on filming that fall and finished off the season. The next summer, we were back in the woods, checking to see which bucks had made it through the harsh winter.

One evening, while I was sitting on the edge of an alfalfa field, a great buck stepped out. Looking closer, I noted a nice drop-tine hanging off his main beam. I looked again and, sure enough, the back G2s had bladed a bit more and split. It was the small 4×4 buck from the previous season, but he had added some serious antler. That night, we started calling him “Droppy.”

For the rest of the summer and through the fall hunting season, we were able to capture some great footage of him. He looked like a young deer, and we all knew the potential he could have if left alone. We went through all of our old trail camera pictures and confirmed we had pictures of him back a couple of years. We were certain he was now only 4 years old, immediately putting him on the “pass list.”

Another year later, during the summer of 2011, after several nights out looking, we had not yet caught a glimpse of Droppy, and we were starting to worry that the winter—or predators—had gotten him. We slipped into the stretch of timber that Droppy had been using for the past few years to pull the card from our Spypoint camera, and there he was. “Wow,” was the only thing I said.

He had grown drastically again. It was immediately apparent that we needed to take a better look at deer this year. He was 5 years old now and surely had another year or two of growth in him, but we wanted to get an up-close look at him before we decided to take him or leave him alone for another year.

October and part of November passed without another encounter with Droppy, and then it happened. I checked two trail cameras in the area, and for the first time in four years, there were no pictures of Droppy. It was nearing the rut, and I told myself that he was just off searching for does. Three days later, a local landowner informed us of a nice drop-tine buck that another hunter in the area had shown him … in the back of his truck. A couple more questions removed all doubt. In our minds, Droppy was dead.

A few days later, I took a great buck that we had a lot of history with and that had often traveled with Droppy, a 180-class buck we called “Sticker Sam.” But what happened that day, well, I wouldn’t believe it if we hadn’t filmed it.

We were filming the recovery of Sticker Sam when a fleeting deer caught my eye. I looked over suddenly, and right there, 100 yards away, just cresting a hill on his retreat, was Droppy! I couldn’t believe it. I simply tipped my hat to Droppy as, one way or another, he had beaten me this year.

At the end of the season, again, we heard of a big drop-tine deer being shot in the general area. But we weren’t going to be fooled so easy this time. It wasn’t until late December turned to January, then February, with no sightings or pictures of Droppy, that we began to worry. In February, Steve went in to pull the trail cameras for the rest of the winter. My phoned buzzed, and it was a text from Steve, that simply read, “Droppy lives.” There was only one picture of him, but that’s all we needed.

In the early spring of 2012, I started looking for Droppy again. This time, we found him in May, in the same patch of timber he had frequented in the past. By the end of June, we were starting to realize what a deer he was turning into. His typical frame was huge, and he carried big, split brows and matching flyers on both sides but his droptine was gone this year. We decided that this deer would consume my season until we were able to get an encounter with him.

The summer wore on, and it was soon time to set up so we could get a look at Droppy in person once the season arrived. The old spot where we were currently getting pictures of him had not worked well the year before. This year, by the time he was hitting the field we were on the edge of, it was often late or after dark on the trail camera.

Steve suggested we move to the south side of the string of woods. We had contemplated doing that last year as well but were afraid of bumping the buck when trying to get to the blind. The only potential set-up spot there was about 200 yards from where we believed Droppy was bedding.

We decided to try it and went in to set up our ground blind and trail camera. A couple of weeks later, we returned to check the camera, and he was right there, every single day. To top it off, he was coming by in good light. When I got home that day, I sat and looked at the pictures of Droppy on my computer in complete amazement.

He was everything a dream buck could be, and more. He was 6 years old now, and we knew there was a good chance he had one more year of growth left in him, but my mind was completely consumed. I knew that this would be the most incredible deer I would ever have the opportunity to hunt and that this year I was going to put everything into just that, hunting Droppy.

Everything looked good—almost too good. Nearly every evening, he would pass by the trail camera within a 15-minute window, but 10 days before season opened, Droppy’s little piece of paradise was invaded by a few hundred head of cattle. Droppy was gone.
The cattle were gone too by opening day, but Droppy was still missing. We looked in a few likely spots for him, but nothing we did produced any information on where he was.

A week later, we were trying to decide whether to pull the blind from the spot where we had so frequently caught pictures of Droppy before the cattle had pushed him out. I snuck into the spot and pulled the memory card on my camera. Sure enough, there he was, back to his regular routine almost to the minute. I couldn’t believe it.

For the next couple weeks, we only had a few nights where the wind was right to get in and hunt the blind, but we were not having any encounters. Knowing we had a whole season of TV shows to produce and other deer that we wanted to hunt, I made a grave mistake. The next night, I sent one of our cameramen, Ritchy, with a friend to hunt a spot that we felt they had a great chance of connecting with another good buck we had been watching for the last four years as well, and I headed into the “Droppy blind” alone, intending to film myself.

Right at last light, as I was getting packed up for the night, Droppy made an appearance. The light was too low to shoot or get good quality footage, but I wanted to get any footage of him possible. I balanced my bow on my knee and got the camera rolling on him.

Droppy walked right by where I had the camera positioned on the tripod, and then, when attempting to pan the camera to follow him, I let my bow slip off my knee. The bow struck the tripod and spooked Droppy. My whole world crumbled in an instant. I had just scared the buck of my dreams, and I knew there was a good chance I had just severely reduced our odds of getting an opportunity at him.

Later that night, I reviewed the grainy footage that I had gotten and realized that when the bow hit the tripod, Droppy had only made two leaps and looked back. Fortunately, when he turned to see what had made the noise, he wasn’t looking at the blind. He then simply walked away, allowing me to retain some small amount of hope.

One week later, I slipped in to check the Spypoint camera again, and I had gotten about as lucky as any hunter could get. The “mishap” hadn’t phased Droppy one bit, and he had been by several times since. The winds were right, so that afternoon, we headed back in to sit the blind.

On that evening, October 6, we headed into the blind and, like so many times before, got things set up for the afternoon. Ritchy got his camera equipment ready, I set up my Ozonics unit in its usual place, and we sat back in anticipation of what might happen in the hunt ahead.

Early in the evening, a couple of small bucks made an appearance and were milling around in front of us. While it was still early, one shot his head up to look up the channel to the east. I instantly had an odd feeling that Droppy was there. I leaned forward to look to the east, and, sure enough, there he was, 200 yards away and coming towards us. Ritchy couldn’t see him yet, but I tapped his knee and whispered to get ready.

As Droppy closed the distance, Ritchy leaned forward with the camera, and I heard him mumble, “Oh, my Lord,” as Droppy walked into frame at 100 yards. It was our first up-close look at him in broad daylight. Weaving between the big timber with the sunlight glinting off his antlers, Droppy was a breathtaking sight. He would walk 10 yards, then stop and survey the area, then come another 15.

Before long, he was at only 18 yards and approaching our shooting lane. Ritchy knew I would be shooting the second I had the opportunity, and I drew my bow when he was mere steps from where I could shoot. I came to full draw, anchored, and waited for Droppy to take four more steps. I settled my pin on him and released.

Droppy jumped and took three bounds away, quite slowly and calmly. Ritchy was still filming as Droppy looked back at the blind. Droppy took one more step and fell to the ground. The deer that I had dreamed about, that my dad had dreamed about, was down, only 35 yards away. I had expected a wall of excitement to hit me, but it did not, and it quickly became clear to me why.

I had ended the hunt. I had often wondered that if we actually got Droppy, what we would say or do after the shot, but when Droppy went down and Ritchy panned the camera back to me, I just asked him to please shut it down for a moment. It wasn’t a moment for high fives, yelling or jumping up and down. It was simply a moment for which I had waited a lifetime and a moment in which I was flooded with appreciation. We were fortunate enough to have been able to watch and hunt a deer like Droppy.

Ritchy, being the dedicated cameraman he is, of course, refused to shut the camera down. We packed up in a hurry and walked to the deer. I was in disbelief as we stood just feet from Droppy. I knelt down, picking the old fella’s head up, and was in awe of what a beautiful animal he was.

It was only October 6, but already I couldn’t have gotten my arms around his neck. His face was grey and scarred, and he still carried a proud look. It was an incredibly bittersweet feeling. I was excited that I had accomplished something I had wanted so badly, yet there was also a feeling of sadness, that after years of watching and filming Droppy, we would never again check a trail camera and see his picture.

Shortly after, our hunting partners, Steve and Jason, showed up, and we all discussed how he looked in person compared to the trail camera pictures. We had been pretty close on our estimates, but we didn’t really realize how massive his typical frame was. Now that he was on the ground in front of us, it was obvious that the typical frame was in the 200-inch category as a 5×5, and with the split browtines, matching flyers and other abnormals, he would gross over 230 inches.

Even though my father wasn’t there to enjoy watching and hunting Droppy, he is with me always in my passion and appreciation for the greatest big game animal ever to walk, and for that, I am forever grateful.

Editor’s Note: Grossing over 231 inches as a non-typical, Droppy is the largest known whitetail to have been taken on film. You can watch this hunt and many others on Dean Partridge’s television show, “Canadian Whitetail Television,” which airs in the U.S. on Sportsman Channel and in Canada on WildTV.

◄ Back

Next ►

Picture 1 of 37

NAW's Best Bucks of 2012

Sunrise was to be at 7:36 a.m., and it was 6:50 when I slid into the pop-up ground blind on Nov. 19, 2012. The mixed coniferous bush near Kenora, Ontario, was still draped in darkness, and I soon had settled in for a dawn-to-dusk hunt.

My partner Chris Savage and I had spent the last five weeks archery hunting several spots near Kenora, trying to pattern a quality deer. Even though our eight trail cameras and on-the-ground scouting in several other spots had shown some respectable whitetails, we were concentrating most of our time in this particular location. And for good reason: It was home to a giant buck we’d named “Kong.”

Now, despite the number of trail cameras we had out, we’d not yet snagged a photo of the monster. But we knew he was here.

No matter where you are, locating a big whitetail usually involves a lot of work. Through all our scouting efforts, as of early last October we had located one really good whitetail. Chris and I were fine-tuning our setups around that 170-class deer when a friend and co-worker, Jason, stumbled across something of even more interest.

Jason stepped into the office one day in early October and told me he had just seen “a really big buck” while cruising a local back road. In my experience, a lot of people that see an average 8-pointer on the hoof sometimes refer to a deer like this as “a really big buck,” so when Jason dropped that comment, I honestly didn’t pay much attention.

However, I did respond with “Hey, you didn’t get a picture of that deer, did ya?”

Surprisingly, when I asked, he answered, “Yeah, I did get one in fact.”

Jason then showed me the photo on his iPhone. It was the best deer picture I had seen in years. The buck was a giant! I immediately called Chris and emailed him the photo. We were excited and agreed that this deer could be in the 180-class. And so began the quest for Kong.

The area in which he’d photographed the buck consisted of a lot of private property, with few houses and mostly solid bush. Access was limited. We got as close as we could by getting permission from a local landowner friend to hunt his parcel, but we were still a mile from where we believed Kong’s “bedroom” was.

Chris and I spent a couple days walking the property, which consisted of solid bush, mixed deciduous and coniferous growth with an old skidder trail through the middle. The trail ended at a large 25-acre swamp.

There was also a ridge that ran from the swamp back to the main road, which was about 3/4 of a mile away. The swamp was the key. These are great barriers, funneling animal travel around them. We decided to set up about 125 yards from the swamp, which would force most animals cruising around the swamp to pass close to our location. There was still 125 yards of solid bush between the swamp and us, but in my experience, you’re better off giving a bit of distance from these large obstacles.

We set up with the ridge to the south of us and the skidder trail to our north. With this being such a low area, we knew scent control would be an issue. It seemed ideal for a “doublewide” pop-up blind. We set the blind only 20 yards to the main trail, still within good bow range.

In front of our stand was also a thick area of balsams, which appeared to be a bedding area. We tried to position ourselves in a high-traffic area, but close to a bedding location, so that when the rut kicked in, hopefully cruising bucks could easily locate does nearby.

While our strategy was simple, we believed it had a good chance of proving effective. We weren’t sure where Kong’s bedroom was, but we felt he would breed all available does close to him first, then eventually begin drifting farther and farther through all phases of the rut, eventually passing through our spot. And at that moment, hopefully one of us would be there.

Chris and I do most of our hunting from climber-style tree stands. However, this location was ideal for a two-man pop-up. We hunted it consistently for 5-6 weeks, hour by hour trading turns with the bow or video camera. During that span we saw some nice bucks and a lot of other deer but never laid eyes on Kong.

The pre-rut came and went, then the peak. Finally, it was dipping into the post-rut, with still no sightings or even trail camera photos of Kong. But as each phase of the rut passed, Chris and I remained positive that at some point Kong finally would show himself, and that one of us would get an opportunity.

I hunted solo on Nov. 19, as Chris was coming off his first night shift. The forecast was for a nice late-fall day, with a slightly below freezing morning giving way to an afternoon high of around 5 C (41 F).

Near 11:30 a.m., I was thinking of food; then I heard an animal approaching from my left. As I slid forward and peeked to the left, I saw a big buck approaching on the trail that would bring him directly across in front of me at 20 meters. I positioned myself for a shot as the buck appeared directly in range. When I bleated, he stopped.

The buck was a beauty we had never seen, even on trail camera. He sported a wide, fairly heavy rack with 9 or 10 points. One brow tine looked to be 6-8 inches long, the other maybe 3 inches. He was a cool-looking deer, but not Kong. I put my bow back on my knees and let him pass. The buck’s arrival buoyed my confidence; he had left his home area and showed up here, looking for a doe in heat. Maybe Kong would as well.

I saw no more deer until 1:20 p.m., when a doe and her fawn drifted in and began feeding around me. I was unsure if I had seen this particular pair earlier that morning. I kept still so as not to alarm them.

Maybe five minutes later, the doe’s head shot up, and she seemed to stare right at me. Then I realized she was looking past me, toward a thick hill behind my blind. I turned around and slowly and quietly pulled the window covering over to peek out. I could hear an animal walking. Then I spotted a lot of long tines parting the trees about 45 yards away. It was Kong!

He turned and walked parallel to me, cruising the adjacent ridge. He never stopped and quickly drifted out of sight, traveling west as he cruised for does. Then, as quickly as he’d arrived he was gone from sight, the sound of his hooves in the crusted snow diminishing to silence.

Should I snort wheeze? Should I grunt? What should I do? So many thoughts were swirling through my mind. But rather than call, I turned back to look out front.

The doe and her fawn went back to feeding. At that point I was willing to wait to see if Kong would come back on his own. I knew he was cruising for does, and I had one directly in front of me.

Again the doe’s head snapped up, staring directly down the trail the other buck had walked in on that morning. I heard approaching footsteps in the snow…and then they stopped.

I grasped my PSE and peered out to the left. There Kong stood, about 35 meters away, staring directly at the doe and fawn. He was a giant, and my heart immediately began pounding even harder than before. His rack was taller than any I had ever seen in the bush. He was beautiful.

I slid back and focused straight ahead, waiting and trying to compose myself. I heard his steps again in the crusty snow to my left, and in a moment I could see Kong begin to fill the front window of my blind. The doe and her fawn bolted to my right. He stopped directly in front of my blind, broadside at 20 meters—then suddenly bolted toward the doe.

Fortunately, Kong quickly skidded to a stop again, quartering away from me. The range was still 20 meters. I’ll always remember the hard, adrenaline-charged draw of my bow; I was so shaken I could barely pull it back. But once at full draw, I put my 20-meter pin behind his shoulder and let fly.

As my Lumenok went out of sight, the deer bolted, crashing out of sight into some thick tag alders and birch trees to my left. I sat in disbelief, knowing I had just shot the giant we had been after for so long!

I sat in shock for a few minutes, trying to connect the scraps of what had just happened into a coherent thought. Then I began texting a few key people. First, of course, was Chris. “I just killed Kong!!!!!” my text to him read.

Next to get a text was my wonderful and ever-patient wife Beth. The third text went to my dad. The latter was the only one who responded immediately, calling my phone—but I wanted to remain quiet in the blind, I did not take his a call. We texted back and forth for a couple of minutes, as I tried to describe this amazing hunt.

Then my phone began to vibrate. It was Chris, so I decided to pick up.

“Are you serious?” he asked, followed by, “Why didn’t you call me?” and finally, “WOW!”

Chris was soon en route with another good friend and avid outdoorsman, Jeff Gustafson. I sat until 2 p.m., giving Kong a full 30 minutes to expire, even though I was totally confident in my shot. While I sat there, enjoying the moment, I decided to call and share the moment with my wife. I knew I had taken a buck of a lifetime, and it was an amazing time for me.

At 2 p.m., I climbed out of our blind and located my arrow, which was covered in beautiful, bright, lung blood. I placed it in my quiver and began to follow the heavy blood trail. It was a short one; Kong lay in the thick tags and birch trees where I had lost sight of him. He’d traveled about 50 meters before expiring: as clean a kill as one could hope for.

I sat beside the deer, admiring his 17 points. All of his G-2 and G-3 tines split, and there was some junk off his brows. He was heavy, high, dark and beautiful. I sat in disbelief that after hunting for 23 years, I was lucky enough to take the buck of a lifetime. A lot of great hunters never get the opportunity I was given, and for that I am truly grateful.

Following the 60-day drying period, I had Kong officially scored. He grossed 197 2/8 inches and had an incredibly low 2 inches of side-to-side deductions on the typical frame, yielding a net score of 195 2/8. This not only makes the 195-inch minimum for B&C’s all-time record books, it ranks him No. 5 with a bow all-time in Ontario.

◄ Back

Next ►

Picture 1 of 37

NAW's Best Bucks of 2012

When just about everything that can go wrong with the pursuit of a huge buck really does go wrong, it’s easy to get discouraged. But sometimes, persistence wins out in the end. Just ask dedicated bowhunter Bo Russell. The huge Iowa non-typical he arrowed last season is a testimony to the rewards of smart scouting and hard work. Not to mention being adaptable enough to overcome some outside interference—including a crew of archeologists!

A Little History
Bo is a dedicated hunter who spends a lot of time getting ready for deer season. He’s been known to pick out a certain buck and focus strictly on him—for better or for worse.

“I got trail camera pictures of a big 11-pointer in September of 2011 and set sights on shooting him,” he says. “I hunted hard all season but never did see the deer. In fact, I was so focused on shooting that buck, I didn’t shoot a deer that year at all.

“The following spring (2012) I searched high and low for the buck’s sheds but came up empty-handed. To the best of my knowledge, nobody else found them, either.”

Scouting
“I normally start running four to five trail cameras in early August, mainly set up on scrapes, rub lines and food sources,” Bo says. “Once I’ve located a couple of mature bucks, I keep my distance and scout primarily with binoculars or a spotting scope,” Bo says.

“Aerial photos are also helpful when scouting new ground. Not only do I use them to understand the lay of the land, but also the surrounding properties. It helps me determine where the natural funnels and bedding areas are located. And those spots generally make the best stand sites, too.”

The Layout
Some hunters believe you need a lot of land if you want to take home a lot of antler. Bo knows that’s not necessarily the case.

“This particular piece of ground is only about 50 acres,” he says. “With the exception of a couple draws and a pond, it’s primarily flat. It’s actually a tree farm that has grown up over the years and is really thick cover now. The deer have made it their primary bedding area.

“Most of the trees aren’t very big, so finding one big enough for a stand in the right location isn’t that easy,” Bo continues. “It’s so thick I can’t see more than 40 or 50 yards through it. My best stand is located on along the fringes of the pines, where there are a few bigger trees. A cornfield surrounding the property was the primary food source (last year).”

A Difficult Start
Despite knowing there were some good bucks in the area, Bo wasn’t all that confident as he looked ahead to the 2012 archery season.

“I was on a two-year dry spell and hadn’t shot a buck,” he explains. “To make matters worse, I had started a new job about a year ago and didn’t have any vacation time. Other than the weekends, I was constrained to hunting the afternoons. My plan was to shower at work, then head straight for the stand from there.

“Early in the second week of October I pulled the memory cards from my trail cameras on the tree farm,” Bo said. “When I brought the pictures up on the computer, I couldn’t believe what I saw. There were pictures of a huge buck with a club-shaped drop tine on the left side, and he had 18 or 19 points. I nicknamed the buck ‘Southpaw’ and made up my mind to hunt him and settle for nothing less.

“I thought about the big buck all the time,” Bo said. “In fact, I started dreaming about him three or four times a week. It was crazy. From that point on I hunted every evening after work, and both morning and evening on the weekends. There’s no doubt, I was obsessed with the buck.”

First Sighting
“It was Oct. 26 when I got my first look at the buck,” the bowhunter notes. “Four does came meandering out of the pine trees to the north. They hung up about 40 yards out and started acting nervous and stomping around. Even though they were upwind, I suspected the wind was swirling and carrying my scent under the trees. For sure they knew something wasn’t quite right and eventually walked off and out of sight.

“I had just made a few blind grunts, and a couple minutes later I heard thrashing noises back in the thick cover of the pines,” Bo says of the first time he actually laid eyes on a colossal buck he called “Southpaw.”

“It sounded like a buck raking a tree and busting branches,” the bowhunter says of that initial sighting. “Heavy steps coming through the timber told me it was a buck closing the distance. Shortly after that, I spotted the unmistakable drop tine through the thick brush.

“Having a deer of that caliber closing the distance had me nervous, to say the least,” Bo admits. “Call it what you like, but it was a clear case of buck fever.

“When the buck reached the exact spot where the does caught my wind, he came to an abrupt stop. He jerked his head up and started sniffing the wind. It was a 40-yard shot, but there was just too much brush in the way. I thought to myself, I’ve just ruined the stand and any chances of shooting this deer.

“About that same time, he let out a loud snort and trotted back towards the thick cover,” Bo continues. “He snorted at least four or five more times before it got quiet. I was just sick about the whole ordeal, but sat until dark before climbing down.

2nd Sighting
“Oct. 28 found me heading to the same general area, but to a stand within eyesight of the cornfield,” Bo says. “The field had just been picked, so I figured it would be my best bet.

“It was just getting light when three does came out of the pine trees and walked into the cornfield, maybe 100 yards away. They started acting funny, looking back toward the pine grove. I figured something was following behind.

“Not long after, I spotted movement along the timber edge. I took a closer look through the binoculars and realized it was the drop-tine buck. I was excited, to say the least.

“I watched the buck for a good half-hour pushing the does around the field,” Bo continues. “Eventually they all ran back into the pines and disappeared. I figured they were bedded down for the day. Rather than risk bumping the buck leaving or coming back, I decided to sit
all day.”

3rd Sighting
Knowing a big buck is nearby always makes it easier to stay on stand. And in this case, the hunter’s patience was rewarded with yet another sighting of his target trophy.

“There wasn’t much movement until 15 minutes before dark,” Bo says. “That’s when Southpaw came walking out of the pines behind the does. He wasn’t pushing the does, but instead just hanging out in the field. Eventually the does started meandering in my direction, but he just stayed in the field.

“It was getting close to the end of shooting hours, so I made a couple of soft grunts, attempting to draw him closer. He started coming but made a wide circle downwind.”

With Bo’s stand being inside the timber’s edge, light was fading rapidly. By the time the buck came within bow range, conditions were marginal.

“He stood right beneath the stand, grunting and thrashing trees,” Bo says. “I wanted to take the shot, but it was just too risky under the low-light conditions. Eventually it grew too dark to see, but I could still hear him. It was agonizing. Rather than take a chance bumping the buck walking out too soon, I sat for well over an hour before climbing down.”

By now, Southpaw had become a full-blown obsession. “Hardly a night went by that I didn’t dream about the buck,” Bo claims. “In fact, one night I actually dreamed that I killed him. Waking up that morning and realizing I hadn’t was absolutely depressing.”

Archaeologists Invade
“I took Halloween evening off to take the kids trick-or-treating,” Bo remembers. “On the way home from work I drove by my hunting area and saw an excavator and bulldozer parked near the field entrance. There was also a truck and several people in the field near my stand where the big drop-tine buck had been coming out.

“I was pretty mad and drove back to find out what they were up to,” Bo adds. “They told me they were with the University of Iowa Archeologist Society. The field was a possible site for a new highway coming through, and they would be doing survey work, excavating the ground for the next several days.

“Needless to say, I was pretty bummed out and wondered if anything else could possibly go wrong.”

Change of Plans
As hard as it might have been for Bo to keep a positive outlook on the quest for this buck, he wasn’t yet ready to throw in the towel.

“I have a couple other stands on the opposite side of the property,” he points out. “Considering the facts, I didn’t have much choice but to hunt one of them. For the next week I hunted my stand near the pond. I saw a few deer that week, including two bucks that hadn’t been seen before.” But Southpaw wasn’t among them.

“The archeologist crew took Sunday off, so that morning I decided to hunt the stand near the excavating site. Unfortunately, I didn’t see a single deer.”

“Sunday afternoon found me heading back to the same stand. The field was pretty torn up (from the team’s digging), and I remember thinking to myself that it couldn’t get much worse. Those thoughts had barely passed when two black Labs came running through the timber and across the field. Deer were running everywhere, but not the big one.”

By now, Bo couldn’t be blamed for feeling he was snakebit in the quest. But he soon found encouragement.
“Totally bummed out, I called my Uncle Gary on the way home and told him what had just happened. Gary said, ‘Good things come to those who pray.’ He was probably right, so that’s what I did.”

The Secret is Out
“Minus a couple close friends, I hadn’t told anyone about Southpaw,” Bo says. “However, after the archeology crew moved in, there were two vehicles parked down the hill just about every day.

“On Nov. 5, one of those hunters approached me with trail cam pictures of Southpaw working a scrape at 7:30 that morning. With the rut approaching, the buck was becoming increasingly visible during the daylight. I must admit, that had me more than just a little worried. The secret was out, and it was just a matter of time before someone shot the buck.”

The Payoff
For Bo, the good news was that the calendar was becoming more favorable for buck sightings. The bad was that deer patterns still were stirred up from all the recent human activity.

“The stand I chose (on November had only been hunted once all season,” the bowhunter remembers. “Although the spot looked good when the stand was hung, I had absolutely no confidence hunting it. Nevertheless, it was time to change things up and try something different.

“Instead of going into the area the same way, I parked in a different location and took a different route to the stand,” Bo says. “I arrived at the stand around 3:00 without bumping any deer, so that was a plus.

“Two days before I had cut the tarsal gland off my neighbor’s buck,” he says. “So before settling in, I hung it 20 yards upwind of the stand. With any luck it would give the dominant buck the idea that a rival buck had invaded his territory. If nothing else, it would make a good cover scent.”

For the first hour Bo saw no deer, and he spent most of that time pondering how to get the buck during late muzzleloader season. But as he was about to find out, there would be no need for such strategizing.

“Around 4 p.m., I ranged a couple of trails,” he recalls. “The first was a clearing 49 yards away. The second was 25 yards straight out in front of me. Nothing was happening, so I decided to grunt a couple of times, and followed up with a doe bleat.

“A few minutes later I looked down to check the time, and when I looked back up, I spotted the big antler frame coming through the timber,” Bo says. “It was Southpaw, and he was heading in my direction.

“He was walking slowly down the trail previously ranged at 49 yards. As he continued, I kept telling myself to concentrate on the shot, not the antlers. When he got to the 25-yard trail, he turned ever so slightly and continued toward the clearing.

“Knowing it would likely be the last time I’d see the buck, I was committed to taking the shot,” Bo continues. “Two steps before the clearing, I came to full draw. And the second his vitals were exposed, I settled the pin and hit the release.

“At the sound of the string he lunged downward, but not far enough. The arrow struck the spine, and he dropped to the ground. Instinctively, I nocked another arrow and finished him off.”

Finally, all of that time and effort put into getting a crack at Southpaw had resulted in an opportunity. And Bo had made the most of it.

“I could see him lying there, 50 yards away,” the bowhunter recalls. “At that point I was shaking so bad I had to sit down for fear of falling out of the tree. A few minutes later I climbed down for a closer look. I was in disbelief—that is, until I grabbed his antlers. That’s when reality sank in. I had shot the buck of my dreams, literally.

“He had great mass, and I counted 19 points, including a 12-inch forked drop tine on the left side. I sat
for the longest time admiring his antlers and reliving the events from the past two seasons leading up to that moment. It was the experience of a lifetime.”

Bo’s wife, Terra, got the first call. Then, the hunter phoned his friend, Ben Thomson, and Bo’s brother, Luke. Both soon were on their way to help get the deer out. When they arrived at the Russell residence, “There were a bunch of people at the house,” Bo says. “About half of them I didn’t even know. But they had heard about the giant and came out to see it.”

Eventually, more became known. “I later learned that a young lady shot the buck in 2011 about a mile south of where I was hunting,” Bo says. “The arrow hit the right shoulder blade and didn’t get any penetration. That might explain why I didn’t see the deer during the 2011 season.”

Interestingly, Bo found a pocket of infection under the hide on the deer’s right shoulder, as well as marks from that 3-blade broadhead. Did the injury to the right shoulder in ’11 cause the deer to grow the drop tine on the left side in ’12? Nobody knows for sure.

Lots of Antler
In March, Bo had his rack officially measured at the Iowa Deer Classic. The giant had a gross score of 246 4/8 inches and a net of 231 4/8. That made him the second-largest bow kill entered from last season. And likely one of the hardest earned.

◄ Back

Next ►

Picture 1 of 37

NAW's Best Bucks of 2012

I usually write one of two types of deer-hunting features. Many are about my own experiences; the rest are stories related to me by people I didn’t know before interviewing them. But this one is different.

The hunter involved is my close friend Jason Tuttle, and I actually got to live this story along with him—even though I wasn’t hunting the buck he ended up shooting. I was able to see the ups and downs of this very long pursuit as I talked to Jason before and after virtually every hunt over two seasons, helped him check trail cameras and move stands on occasion, and was as close to the action as I could be without sitting in the stand with him. In other words, I had great seats for this dramatic hunt. I only hope I can do his story justice.

Jason is a firefighter in Lexington, Ky., and as he is also a serious deer and turkey hunter. His “24 on/48 off” schedule affords him a lot of time in the field. Jason hunts mature whitetails, and he runs trail cameras religiously.

In 2009, a very nice 2.5-year-old 10- pointer showed up on camera, and Jason mentally noted him as a potential future trophy. But my friend had no idea how this young buck would come to affect his life.

Jason was hunting a 120-acre farm. On such properties, it is not unusual to get a buck on camera, but then never see him again. It is tough trying to manage deer on small acreages, especially those surrounded by hunted properties. So when the deer showed up again in 2010, as a 3.5-year-old, Jason was pleased. And when the same buck showed up in July 2011 as a definite shooter, Jason was understandably excited. The buck had thrown a fork on his left G-3 tine, and my friend estimated him to be well into the 150-class range. It was time to get serious about hunting the deer.

The trail cameras had turned up one curious fact: The buck somehow had lost his left eye during the past eight months. That eye was “glassed over,” and it was very evident in the infrared night photos. The nickname “Cyclops” seemed quite appropriate, and it stuck.

During August 2011 the buck was feeding regularly in a ridgetop alfalfa field. A single oak with a couple cedars covering much of it stands right in the middle of the plot, making for a great stand location. It was here on opening day of Kentucky’s bow season that Jason had his first encounter with the Cyclops.

The buck came into the alfalfa with plenty of shooting light, and he ended up 40 yards from Jason’s stand in the big oak. The bowhunter never was able to get his bow and get turned completely around to take a shot, though, because there were a number of other deer much closer; he knew he’d have been picked off, spooking the whole lot. The mature buck eventually fed out of range and disappeared.

Cyclops continued to show up on trail camera virtually every night in the alfalfa field, but now he was coming in after dark. So Jason put out six cameras around the alfalfa, trying to determine where the deer was coming from. He figured if he knew the trail the buck was using, he could set a stand back in the woods a couple of hundred yards and catch him during shooting hours.

It took a few days, but the surveillance worked. Soon, Jason was fairly sure he had the approach figured out. He set his tree stand 25 yards from the trail he thought the buck was using on a severely steep hillside. Then, when the wind was perfect, he climbed in for an evening sit.

As if on cue, a full half-hour before dark Jason saw deer heading up the trail. In all there were three bucks: two younger 8-pointers and Jason’s target 11-pointer. The small bucks came through and headed toward Jason’s stand, but the big guy hung back a little. He eventually worked to inside of 25 yards from Jason, but when he stopped, all the hunter could see was his lower legs. The buck had stopped where, due to the steep hill angle, a large maple branch in full foliage blocked his vitals.

Call it the sixth sense of a mature buck, but for whatever reason, he got a little antsy and finally just turned around and went back down the trail the way he had come. The two smaller bucks followed him back down the hollow.

Jason continued to get a lot of trail cam photos of Cyclops, but throughout the rest of the 2011 season he never physically saw the buck again. In March of 2012, Jason found one of the buck’s sheds, and he had been right on in his estimation of the Cyclops’ score. Measuring the shed, figuring the other side and giving a moderate spread, we estimated the buck would gross 157 inches.

When Cyclops showed back up in July of 2012 on trail camera, Jason and I were both astonished. The buck had really blown up. He had put on a lot of tine length, both G-3s forked, and he had a couple other small kickers off the bases of the G-2s and G-3s. We were blown away that the buck was still alive at 5.5 years when he had lived his entire life in an area of such small properties.

Cyclops was very regular on trail cam through July and August, and Jason had worked his schedule with vacation time so he could hunt every day for the first two weeks of season. To me, this is where the story really gets good.

Jason set up a couple of stands in the field where the buck was feeding in the evenings, and he was bound and determined to hunt him only on perfect winds. Opening evening he sat in a stand with the wind in his face, but the buck did not show. The next day, when he checked his camera, he found that the buck had fed in front of his other stand location in broad daylight.

On the second afternoon of bow season, we experienced a torrential thunderstorm. Jason and I both went to hunt, but with all the lightning we climbed out of our stands. We sat in our trucks and talked on cell phones about what to do, but the radar looked terrible, so both of us decided to throw in the towel and go home. Of course an hour before dark, the storm passed and the sun popped out.

You guessed it, when Jason checked the camera the next day, the buck had come out 20 yards from his stand after the rain stopped. My friend was 0 for 2.

On the eighth day of season, Jason had a replay of the opener. He went to one stand because of wind direction, and the trail cam revealed that the buck had showed at his other stand. After that, the buck did not show up again in daylight until September 21st and 22nd at a creek crossing where he was coming in from another property.

For three weeks after that, Jason got fairly regular photos of the buck in a couple of locations, but there were no more daylight photos until Oct. 16. Cyclops showed up at this spot in daylight each day through the 19th. But Jason wasn’t in the stand any of those days.

The early muzzleloader season was the weekend of Oct. 20-21, so Jason and I went in at midday to set up a new stand. He hunted there both days of muzzleloader season, but with no luck. But wouldn’t you know? On Oct. 23, Cyclops showed up again in daylight at that stand.

Jason had pretty well decided this would be the stand from which he would kill the buck if it ever happened. So his approach now began to revolve around waiting for the right wind to let him hunt there.

One afternoon about this time, we sat down in my garage with a lot of trail cam photos, a calculator and notebook and made our best attempt at scoring the buck. Trying to be as realistic as possible, we came up with a gross score of a little over 186 inches. I truly felt the deer would break 190. But no matter—he was an absolute giant. We knew that for sure.

On Oct. 29, Jason hunted the stand in the morning. The weather was terrible, with the wind blowing between 30 and 40 mph. After four hours of hanging onto his tree, Jason finally decided no deer in its right mind would be moving in such conditions, so he climbed down.

At 10:38, Jason’s trail camera got a photo of him walking past on the way back to his truck. At 11:16, the same camera took a photo of Cyclops!

The wind was wrong on Oct. 30, and naturally, the buck showed himself in daylight. On Halloween, Jason decided to stay home for the festivities with his son, Jack (who is also a real deer killer), and again, the buck was right there in shooting light. By now, my friend had begun to believe the buck was some sort of mentalist.

Jason got another daylight photo on Nov. 5, only five days prior to opening day of rifle season. The first two days of gun season Jason had no luck. On the next, he sat in a ground blind somewhere else, just to stay out of the weather. You guessed it: Cyclops was at his tree stand in mid-afternoon!

At this point, the time, effort and lack of success were really wearing on Jason and his family. On Nov. 13 his wife Erin half-jokingly told him, “You need to either kill this deer or go marry him.”

Even Jack was eager for it to end. “Please kill this deer, so I can get my dad back,” he added. The situation was stressing everyone out.

On Nov. 14 the wind was right for hunting the tree stand, and Jason decided to sit all day. At about 7:30 a.m., he heard chasing over the steep hill in front of him. Then a doe came running up the hill and went past him. Jason could hear grunting from the cedars below.

After a few tense minutes, a buck stepped up on a little bench where Jason could see him. But virtually his entire rack, from two inches or so above the bases up, was obscured by cedar branches. Jason could tell the deer was mature, but with so little antler showing, he had no idea which buck it was.

With the buck at only 70 yards, Jason cranked up his scope and looked at the buck closely. Immediately he saw the glassy eye, and he knew Cyclops was his. It was a chip shot for his accurate .270 Win. After the shot, the huge buck only went about 75 yards before he crashed.

I can’t imagine how excited Jason was after this two-year ordeal, but I know that when he called to let me know Cyclops was dead, I almost had a heart attack myself. I was driving between hunts in South Dakota and Nebraska, and I literally almost ran off the road with my heart beating more RPMs than the engine.

I could tell Jason was on top of the world, and he deserved to be. He had put in 36 days hunting Cyclops in 2012 alone, and I have no idea how many trips he made checking cameras, scouting, etc.

As amazing as anything else was the fact that the buck’s “green” net non-typical score came in at 182 3/8 inches. Remember, a month earlier we’d guessed him at 186 and change. But it wouldn’t have mattered if he had been 30 inches smaller—the love/hate relationship Jason had with this deer, thousands of trail camera photos and the amount of time he had spent hunting him over two years literally made this one for the history books of deer hunting. I simply have never met anyone who deserved to kill a deer more than Jason Tuttle deserved Cyclops.

◄ Back

Next ►

Picture 1 of 37

Aaron Milliken

Bill Winke

Bo Cocannouer

Brian Herron

Carter Rice

Dale Gertz

Dorothy Shaffer

Dylan Beach-Bittner

Jeff Danker

Jeff Iverson

Jordan Dressler

Josh Barnard

Joshua Earp

Lindsay Groom

Matt Ford

Michael Morgan

Mike Giarraputo

Mike Moran

Paul Keller

Payton Mireles

Pete Alfano

Randy Walk

Richard Buker

Robert Gramoll

Stanley Suda

Travis Trimmer

NAW's Best Bucks of 2012

Aaron Milliken

Bill Winke

Bo Cocannouer

Brian Herron

Carter Rice

Dale Gertz

Dorothy Shaffer

Dylan Beach-Bittner

Jeff Danker

Jeff Iverson

Jordan Dressler

Josh Barnard

Joshua Earp

Lindsay Groom

Matt Ford

Michael Morgan

Mike Giarraputo

Mike Moran

Paul Keller

Payton Mireles

Pete Alfano

Randy Walk

Richard Buker

Robert Gramoll

Stanley Suda

Travis Trimmer

NAW's Best Bucks of 2012

Aaron Milliken

Bill Winke

Bo Cocannouer

Brian Herron

Carter Rice

Dale Gertz

Dorothy Shaffer

Dylan Beach-Bittner

Jeff Danker

Jeff Iverson

Jordan Dressler

Josh Barnard

Joshua Earp

Lindsay Groom

Matt Ford

Michael Morgan

Mike Giarraputo

Mike Moran

Paul Keller

Payton Mireles

Pete Alfano

Randy Walk

Richard Buker

Robert Gramoll

Stanley Suda

Travis Trimmer