After checking the Weather Channel at 4 a.m. on Nov. 9, opening day of Kentucky's 2013 rifle season, Gerald Jenkins decided to go back to bed. The 69-year-old had no desire to sit in a tripod buffeted by 25 mph gusts.
He woke up a couple of hours later, did a few chores, and then decided the wind had subsided enough for him to go to the 1,200-acre tract he hunts in Warren County.
"My neighbor across the road wanted some meat, so I thought I'd go out and maybe shoot a doe," he told Dale Weddle, who's writing the story for Rack magazine.
He didn't see anything that morning, but he didn't have to wait long when he returned to his stand that afternoon.
"I had been settled in only a little while when a spike came out and went down one side of the CRP," Gerald said. "Not being real particular, I had decided to shoot the spike. But something spooked it."
After it left, he saw a doe.
Almost an hour later, as the sun began to set, Gerald dug out his call and grunted aggressively. Almost immediately, a buck came up over a little rise barely 60 yards to his right.
The buck was crossing the CRP, scouring the adjacent cornfield for other deer, before it stopped at 35 yards. That's when Gerald squeezed his old rifle's trigger, and the big whitetail folded.
"When I walked up there, I was thinking maybe it was an 8-pointer, but then I saw the size of the rack and couldn't believe it. It kept running through my mind how close I came to burning my tag on that spike," Gerald said.
"Every time I counted points, I got a different number. I finally called my wife and told her I'd killed a 30-pointer," he added. It was actually 28, a 14x14, and its BTR composite score is 226 inches.
Gerald shot his buck with a World War II-era, 7.7x58 mm Arisaka rifle, which was produced by the Japanese until 1945. He inherited it from his late stepfather in the 1980s, had a scope added, and began hunting with the antiquated gun rather than treating it as a wartime souvenir.