Big Buck 411 Blog

Dreading Water

Dreading Water

By Mike Handley

Rich Eldridge might’ve shot a smaller version of the buck he tagged in 2016 three years earlier if deer couldn’t swim. Such is the disadvantage of hunting next to a major waterway.

Rich’s ground abuts Indiana’s Wabash River. He first saw the incredible whitetail before the hunting season opened in 2013. The deer was on his side then, and its enormous rack was covered in velvet.

He never saw it again that year, but he got wind of sightings.

“Others were seeing it across the river and were standing in line trying to lease acreage where they might have a chance,” he told Ed Waite, who’s chronicling the hunt for Rack magazine.

Someone actually got a chance at the deer the following year, but flubbed the shot.

The buck reversed its habits in 2015 and spent the summer across the river from where Rich hunts.

“I hoped the whole process would reverse when the velvet came off, that the buck would come back to the north side of the river,” Rich said.

It did.

Rich collected daytime photos of the monstrous whitetail from two different trail cameras in 2016, which indicated it might remain on his property. He devoted every spare hour to bowhunting it.

At 2:30 on the afternoon of Nov. 19, opening day of gun season and midway into the rut’s peak, Rich took his kids’ .243 to the farm.

“While quietly making my way toward a ground blind, I jumped the buck,” he said. “It had been bedded with a doe not 20 yards from my blind.”

Rather than throw in the towel or continue to his stand, Rich simply knelt beside a tree. Forty-five minutes later, a small buck began feeding in the soybeans upwind of him.

Soon, Rich heard another deer grunt, and then the local legend chased a doe out of some brush 75 yards distant. She was leading her top-heavy suitor to him at an angle.

“When the buck was at 45 yards, I shot,” he said. “The deer kicked and tore back into the thicket. I’m not sure what became of the doe.”

A neighbor found the deer the next morning.

The 37-pointer, one of the largest whitetails taken in North America in 2016, is a new runner-up to the Indiana record. Its BTR composite score is a whopping 280 2/8 inches.

— Read Recent Blog!
On the Mend, in the Stand:
Jason Lumpkins | Ohio | BTR Score 182 7/8 inches

Copyright 2024 by Buckmasters, Ltd.

Copyright 2020 by Buckmasters, Ltd