As far as Christina Krajcsovics is concerned, the road to Heaven runs from New Jersey to Iowa, and it’s 15 hours long.
Christina was the tag holder when she and her husband R.J. struck out for a friend’s 300-acre farm last October. He went along to film her hunt.
The cold and snow kept the couple indoors on Oct. 28. To pass the time, they looked at trail camera photographs, which included an image of a real giant. Hope put a spring in their steps the next morning.
While their A.M. hunt was uneventful, the afternoon got off to a great start. They shared the tree, she in a ladder stand and he above her in a lock-on model.
First up was a 6-pointer. Next, they saw a 5x5 engaged in a shoving match with a small tree. The latter was coming their way until it winded them and reversed course.
“The 10-pointer had been gone for only a few seconds when a doe came running past. R.J. whispered, ‘Get ready. A buck is probably chasing her,’” Christina said.
He was right, but the pursuer was the 6-pointer they’d seen earlier.
Around 6:00, as turkeys began flying up to roost all around the couple, R.J. saw a huge buck approaching from behind them, only 20 yards away. He alerted his wife by whispering softly.
“I turned slowly and used R.J.’s body to keep the deer from spotting my movement,” Christina told John Phillips, who’s writing the story for Rack magazine. “I didn’t know exactly how large it was, how many points it had, or what it would score, but I knew if that buck presented a shot, I’d let an arrow fly.”
She drew her bow when the browsing deer passed behind some brush.
She released the arrow when the animal turned broadside to her at 15 yards. As the buck rocketed away, blood was pouring from the wound channel created by her Rage broadhead.
Fifteen minutes after first seeing the deer, Christina and R.J. thought they heard it crash. When they got down and began walking in that direction, she almost collapsed. The flood of emotion had affected her ability to put one foot in front of the other.
“I didn’t get shook up before I took the shot, but I was a mess after my arrow hit. Then, I was stuttering and hardly able to talk,” she smiled.
The deer’s BTR score is 171 2/8 inches.
— Read Recent Blog! Better than Pictures and Sconces: Chris Frey’s wife used to hate the thought of seeing a deer mount in their New Baltimore, Michigan, home.