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The story begins when I first saw this buck. A couple of weeks prior, we went for an afternoon hunt and saw some does and a spiker through the afternoon, but in the last half hour, out comes this big-bodied deer about 700 yards away. Through the binoculars, we can see his massive dark brown rack. He’s huge, easily the biggest deer I have ever seen. It’s an open field so we can’t get closer without spooking him and his does and we don’t have enough time to cover that distance before the sun goes down. We just watch and enjoy seeing him. These big boys don’t make appearances often, so we are just thankful for even seeing him.

We head out again on Thanksgiving Monday (I love hunting on Thanksgiving, shot my first deer then) and we are seeing does like crazy. We had nine hanging out in our field comfortably, but no boys in the crowd. So, we wait. The boys ought to come out sometime we figure, maybe closer to sundown.

Well, as we approach sundown, a big buck pops out from the same place we saw the other one. He has five does with him. I didn’t think he would move like the other one. Actually, you could tell he didn’t want to move, but his does start heading our way. He goes back to the bushes he emerged from, then turns around and reluctantly decides to follow. I tell my wife to keep an eye on the does in our field and I will watch him; we have to make sure we don’t spook those other does. We are watching them come in and my heart is racing like nothing I have ever experienced. This has never happened to me before while hunting. He’s slowly coming in and keeps looking to see if the does will turn back. At 350 yards, he goes into a dip and we can’t see him. But his does come out about 250 yards from us. I get my rifle ready and shortly, after he shows up behind the does, that’s when it hits us; this is that big one from the other week. My heart goes nuts again. The does are calm and so is he. I steady myself with the rifle. I’m getting my heart under control. He moves broadside and then he looks directly at us. I’m ready now and I squeeze the trigger.

When the rifle settles down from the recoil, he isn’t lying there. Did I miss? I ask my wife if she saw me hit him? She isn’t totally sure because the shot made her lose track of him. In the sea of whitetails waving (15 all running) she saw one moving slower than the others were but wasn’t totally sure if it was him or not. She thinks I hit it; but I reply, “Well, if he ran that far it’s a poor shot and I wounded a deer that we will likely not find.” To be honest, there were quite a few “f” bombs in that sentence. She lost track of that slower deer when it turned from the others behind a hay bale.

We go investigate the area where I shot him but it’s now getting dark and we can’t see very well at all. No deer in that spot. I’m fuming. I practice all summer at that distance for this exact reason. The field we are hunting is wide open so it’s a lot of long shots. I know I was setup; I followed my shooting methodology. I’m thinking that I may have missed low because he was further than I realized so I range it... 257 yards.

The landowner uses this field for hay and he is okay with us driving on it. I don’t like driving on land ever, but this circumstance requires it. We go get the truck and use the headlights for better vision and start looking around where he was standing at the time of the shot. I have never had a deer run more than 30 yards after a fatal shot, and typically, I drop them. My wife says we should go back to where he was standing at the time of the shot and look for blood – there were some patches of snow on the ground so maybe we will find evidence. We search but I don’t find any blood and start heading back to the truck. But then she calls out, “We got blood!” And I run over. On a cookie-sized piece of snow, there is blood. According to her, my attitude improves significantly at this point.

Now we hop in the truck and drive up to where the deer were running and where we lost track of him. There is a dip in the land here and as we crest the top, my lights shine on what appears to be a missed cut of hay... wait, nope! It’s my deer!

He is just a heavy rack. I can barely wrap my hands around the main beams and I’m 6-foot-3 so I have some decent sized mitts. He has an amazing split brow tine on the left side. He is by far the biggest deer I have ever taken.

What a special hunt. It was even better because after the shot, I lost my composure, but my wife held hers because when she replayed the events back in her head, she knew I had hit him good. I couldn’t believe that this bruiser ran for 300 yards with his lungs gone. I didn’t think it was even possible. But, on every hunt, we learn something and I’m forever grateful that my partner in life on this hunt kept it together when I didn’t.

I know I would have kept looking for this guy; I have spent hours searching for deer when I’m confident the shooter missed. But you never know, and you show respect by doing your due diligence and searching until you are 100% certain of a miss. But I got myself so riled up over not dropping him that I lost my composure and was too busy being a moron to get myself together in a timely fashion. I’d love to tell this story as if I had it all together, but I think the real events make for a better story. ■


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