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Unbeknownst
By Ed Waite
Buddies Carl Morris Jr. and Jeremy Martin were convinced that the bull of their woods was a photogenic 12-pointer with a gleaming white rack. Of the many deer their trail cameras photographed during the weeks leading up to Ohio’s 2011 season, the big 6x6 stood out like a Brahma in a goat pen. Understandably, that buck was at the top of their ... READ MORE
Curtain Call in Missouri
By Tim Lurk
Tim Lurk finally got the proverbial cigar when this 19-pointer came right to his lap on the final day of his 2011 bowhunt in northwestern Missouri. When my favorite time of year finally arrived in 2011, my dad, brother and I headed north of Ste. Genevieve, Mo., for some bowhunting. There’s nothing like those first 10 days of November. We&rsqu... READ MORE
Black Thursday
By Travis Hogan
Colton Lowry’s 17-pointer from Norton County is the 30th largest Irregular felled by a rifleman in Kansas. The yard was like a parking lot, the farmer’s shop a veritable Wal-Mart on Black Friday. But it was the first Thursday in December, and the crowd wasn’t there to find a deal on a flatscreen TV or the must-have toy du jour. Th... READ MORE
Double Blessing
By John W. Konkel
The first minute of my election-day 2012 hunt, and an 8-point buck was on the ground just 10 yards from me! A neck shot had dropped it, and for a freezer hunter like me, this was a pretty nice buck. Little did I know, however, that this basket-racked 4x4 would soon be dwarfed by another. I had hunted on Saturday, the muzzleloader opener, without an... READ MORE
Lemonade Never Tasted So Sweet
By Scott Siefert
In 2012, my bosses and I decided to lease ground in Pike County, Ill. I’d lived there for two years, so I knew the area intimately, though I’d never hunted any of the private land. I knew that Pike County is a land of giants, the kind of place that could provide us all with deer of a lifetime. A good friend who I met while living in Ill... READ MORE
Trail Cameras Zoloft Dispenser?
By Ed Waite
Scott Rawlings thought he’d never best the 173-inch drop-tined buck he arrowed in 2011. But that was before the bowhunter from Chillicothe, Ohio, checked a trail camera on Oct. 25. The photograph he retrieved put a spring back in his step. “By the end of September, I had not gotten a single picture of a buck on my Wildgame Innovations c... READ MORE
Dominant Eye, Dominant Buck
By Mike Handley
Discovering you’ve been shooting the wrong bow for 10 years is sort of like waking up to realize you’d rather wear pearls than a grunt call. Brady Scheffler might be comfortable with his choice of accessories, but he realized about a month before the 2012 deer season opened that he was far less certain of his shooting orientation. He&rs... READ MORE
Hand on Gloves
By Lisa Price
Had three deer not crossed the road in front of Jamie Schesser’s truck a couple of days before the 2011 rifle season opened in Kansas, his nephew never would’ve considered sitting in a stand most family members had long written off as a waste of time. But one of those whitetails wore a very tall rack, so thick at the bases that the antl... READ MORE
Two Bucks, One Tag … and Completely Legal
By Lisa Price
Three days into Illinois’ 2011 bow season, Billy Foster glimpsed a stud of a buck at 70 yards. He saw it for only 30 seconds, but he was bowled over by the girth of the deer’s baseball bat-sized right main beam, which is why he nicknamed it Louisville. Completely besotted, he hated to go back home to El Dorado, Ark. While hunting the sa... READ MORE
Her Kingdom for X-Ray Vision!
By Gita M. Smith
Rhonda Farley’s arms were hurting. Big time. But whenever she tried to lower her muzzleloader for some relief, her hands would shake uncontrollably. For nearly half an hour, her arms and hands waged a silent war until, ultimately, she resorted to wedging her left elbow into her hip for support. All this for a buck whose rack she had not yet f... READ MORE
Antlers Maximus
By Ed Waite
Call it kismet. Had Kenny Corwin arrived at his hunting spot a few minutes earlier or later last December, there would be one more 20-gauge shotshell in his box of slugs and quite a few more dollars in his bank account right now. In fact, the only thing that didn’t work out for the Ohio deer hunter in 2011 was that his kids weren’t with... READ MORE
Walter Gets His Groove Back
By Ed Waite
Walter Mitchell almost quit hunting last year. The bowhunter from New Madison, Ohio, was so upset over losing a buck, he spent half of November and nearly all of December feeling sorry for himself. Seven yards should’ve been easy-breezy, but the arrow clipped an unseen limb and veered off course, piercing the deer’s paunch and burying i... READ MORE
The Biggest Thing in the World
By Mike Handley
A wide-eyed Shane Ragon clapped a hand to his open mouth like he was trying to swallow a cuss word in the presence of a preacher. The 40-year-old bowhunter from Calhoun City, Miss., didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, to shout hallelujah or utter something less suitable for a tent revival. What he did know was that every time he tried to wal... READ MORE
Venison with a Side of Crow
By Mike Handley
When Danny Culpepper sent his son, Fletcher, a text message on Oct. 22, 2012, asking if he could carry some material in to camouflage his ladder stand, he had no idea Fletcher was sitting in the stand and had just shot a deer from it. He knew only that his 27-year-old son was hunting the 55 acres, which is why he thought to ask before driving back ... READ MORE
Making the Grade
By Rusty Johnson
The taxidermy tag on this set of antlers read “MINE.” Try telling Ryan Odenbrett that life is fair. He wanted to go bowhunting on the cool gray afternoon of Oct. 20. He knew exactly which stand to visit, too. But the conflicted sophomore at Southern Missouri really needed every available hour to study for a biology test. Or did he? His ... READ MORE