How many inches of antler can a whitetail gain from year to year?
If you ask Mike Sheffer, he’ll say close to 50. That’s how much the deer he arrowed in 2018 gained in each of the previous two years.
The 48-year-old Kentucky bowhunter crosses the Ohio River to hunt in southern Illinois. In 2016, he collected trail camera photos of a 10-pointer with potential. A 130-inch rack for a very young deer isn’t the norm.
The deer’s crown grew to 175 inches the next year.
“I had to convince the others who hunt the farm not to shoot that buck, to give (nature) another whirl,” Mike told Lisa Price, who’s writing the story for Rack magazine. Passing up a 175-incher isn’t easy, but the animal survived.
Ahead of the 2018 season, just a month after putting out trail cameras, Mike began collecting photos of the familiar whitetail. The rack was bigger, of course, by yet another 50 inches!
After the buck scraped off its velvet, it began wandering out of its summertime core area. It had similarly disappeared the same time in 2017.
Mike had to scout and rotate a lot of cameras in order to pattern the deer he wanted.
“I had an idea of where it was spending most of its time,” he said. “Nevertheless, I didn’t dive in and start hunting the buck. I wanted to wait until all the conditions were right.”
The stars aligned on a Friday morning in early November, but Mike chose the wrong destination. While he sat in his stand, the buck passed in front of the camera at another location.
He was in the right place the next day.
He hadn’t been 22 feet aloft for long when a young out-of-breath doe approached. Next up was an older doe, dogged by the giant buck.
Romeo and Juliet stopped just 25 yards from Mike.
“When the buck walked behind a big oak tree, I drew my bow,” he said. “The way I was in the stand, I was about 30 feet higher than the doe, but only 15 feet higher than the buck.”
When the buck started forward, Mike grunted.
“The arrow buried only 10 inches into the shoulder,” he said.
Because he knew the shot was high and the penetration was less than stellar, which might hinder a blood trail, he called a guy with a dog.
He needn’t have worried, however, because the deer stayed on its feet for only 150 yards. The dog picked up the scent almost immediately.
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