Picked up a new farm late into the 2017 season. With my buck tag still not punched and muzzleloader season coming up, I threw out some corn and a camera to see what was around. It was brutally cold the first day of ML season with 5-6" of snow on the ground. I decided to only hunt evenings for the 4 days. I packed up a blind, heater, a folding chair and my laptop to check the camera on my son's snow sled and made the 3/4 mile walk to the field.
Once I pulled the card and got setup about 75-80 yds from the bait site, I started scrolling through the cards. I had a couple decent bucks on cam and wasn't until close to the end of the card that a great 10pt with a couple kickers showed up. Excited was an understatement!
Two days had gone by and no sign of him, only pics through the night. It wasn't until day three that a bachelor group of 5 bucks started making their way across the field. As I'm glassing the bucks 200-250 yds away starting from the front to the back of the line, I noticed the very last buck was him. But is was only half of him lol, he dropped his right side already. He got a free pass but his buddy in front of him didn't. I dropped the nice 9pt and cleared the field. The Stickers got to live another year
With 2018 spring coming in and miles of walking to find his shed's, I came up empty. I gave the farm a rest until early August when I tilled and plated a 3/4 acre food plot in the same 20 acre field. The farmer likes to pull hay off of it, but he gave me permission to plant a small plot. After putting a camera up, I didn't capture a picture of him until early October. I couldn't believe the amount of inches he put on in one year. It had to be close to 40-50"!
From then on I only hunted when the wind, access and weather was right. It was him or nothing even though there was a 9pt that would really temp me that was showing during daylight hours.
I wasn't going to push it until he showed closer to daytime movement. With gun season getting closer I was worried that with the pressure around this farm, he was going find a hole and hide until it was over. He's been lucky to make it through 4 season's already, he knows what to do.
First day of gun brought high winds, rain and warmer weather moving in. There was still a light coating of snow from the previous week, so visibility was great covering the field and tree line. A few small bucks and 30-40 shots was it for day one. I went dark to dark and every shot I heard, in the back of my mind I thought it was him. Day two came and I had to work a few hours in the morning. I reached the stand around 1:30 and settled in for the rest of the day. Around 4 p.m. a few turkeys came out to pick in the food plot. While watching them, one hen lifted her head as to being alerted of something in the timber ridge 120 yds in front of me. As I'm glassing the timber, I see a doe come barreling off the hill running the ridge with mouth wide open. Seeing that, I exchanged my bino's for my scoped 450. As I'm using the scope to glass behind her I catch movement on the same trail as she took. A quick look confirmed it was him. He was still in the timber and on a beeline so I had to yell to stop him. Luckily he stopped perfectly in a open hole and I settled the crosshairs behind his shoulder and squeezed off.
After the shot he turned to his left and ran straight up the high wall and over the ridge. I heard nothing.... Feeling good about the shot I still had thoughts that I blew it. First call was to my dad, which was hunting 45 mins away on another farm, he said he was heading my way. After giving the deer a good 1 1/2 hrs we took up the trail. He didn't bleed until he hit the top of the hill which was a sigh of relief. We went maybe 100yds after first blood and there he laid. Shot was back a little catching the diaphragm and liver. Couldn't believe my eyes even though I've seen 100's of pictures of him.
