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The weekend before my
hunt, I hung another tree stand for filming next to my favorite tree
stand. After working on Thursday, we headed to northern Missouri. I was
accompanied by my good friend Jerry Dickens and my Uncle Jerry Burk. We
drove three-and-a-half hours, a drive that I drove every weekend during
the three-month archery season to hunt, except Thanksgiving and Christmas
weekends, all the while knowing that the gun season had passed and never
expecting I would have the hunt of a lifetime the next day.
The day of
the hunt was December 8th, 2000. My friend was very excited
about filming my hunt, since it was the first time he had ever videotaped.
My uncle was hunting on another part of the farm with his muzzleloader. It
was the last weekend of the Missouri black powder season.
At 8:46 a.m., with a slight wind coming in from the north, I noticed a
doe coming in from my right. At that time I whispered to my friend to turn
the camera on. Following the does was the widest buck I had ever seen in
my life while being outdoors. Jerry knew it was a big buck when I reached
for my bow. Following the Wide One were four other smaller bucks. The doe
walked in front of me passing by at thirty yards. Knowing the buck would
follow, I waited for him to present me with a good shot. Finally he walked
out from behind a tree and I placed my sight pin right behind his
shoulder. I released the arrow and it passed straight through the buck at
thirty yards. My friend whispered excitedly, "You hit him! You hit him!"
After the shot, the buck ran approximately forty yards, stopping to
turn around to see what had happened. He never knew what hit him. Hoping
the deer would fall we both stood in astonishment. After lifting and
flicking his tail, he walked out of sight. I didn't want to jump him and
take a chance of him pushing on. We nervously waited for four hours until
we proceeded trailing him. It didn't take long to find him; he was only
fifty yards from where we had lost sight of him.
The deer weighed a mere 205 pounds on the hoof, the antlers' inside
spread was 22 4/8 inches with a gross of 169 4/8 and a net of 165 2/8
typical Boone & Crockett inches.
I have passed up several nice bucks over the past seasons in Ray
County, Missouri to get the one about which I had fantasized. The one
thing I never imagined was getting my dream buck and the whole hunt on
videotape, including footage of the deer approaching and the shot itself. |
