Logan Wilson of Decatur, Texas, had never hunted with a muzzleloader before 2015. And he might not have tried it then if he'd drawn the nonresident rifle tag he wanted.
He and brothers David, Rick and Randy usually drive up to Kansas in December to take advantage of rifle season. They've hunted the same half section - 320 acres - for five years.
When they failed to get rifle tags, they came up with a Plan B.
"None of us had ever used (a blackpowder gun), but we thought it would give us a solid chance to draw tags," Logan told Lisa Price, who's writing his story for Rack magazine. And they did.
Logan acquired a muzzleloader, and they all learned to load and shoot it.
He had no problems with the rifle until opening day in mid-September, when he took aim at a buck wearing about 170 inches of antler, bigger than any he'd ever shot.
The primer went off, but nothing else happened. The bullet never left the barrel. When the deer wandered off, Logan trudged back to his parked UTV and replaced the primer.
"That one didn't fire either, so I tried a third primer," he said. "When it fired, I reloaded. I was pretty confident in the gun after that."
The following afternoon was a scorcher, the 90 degrees far different than the single digits the Wilson brothers sometimes suffered in December. Deer remained in the shadows, off their feet, until the sun began dropping.
Just before sunset, Logan spotted a very large deer 80 yards distant. Then he noticed the antlers.
"I could see the right side of the rack and knew it was heavy with lots of points," he said. "I probably looked at it for less than a second, dropped the sights on the heart, and squeezed the trigger.
"That's the quickest I ever saw a deer and shot, and I've probably shot 200 deer," he added.
He's still amazed he got a shot at the buck, which was directly downwind.
Fifteen inches of irregular growth put Logan's buck in the semi-irregular category. Its composite score is 201 3/8.
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