Cauy Hultman didn’t intend to give the coyotes on his grandfather’s land a free meal last October, but that’s what happened when his arrow clipped only one lung of the buck he shot from only 5 yards.
The Saskatchewan deer hunter’s grandfather farms and raises cattle on 50,000 acres. The place is also home to some beefy whitetails.
Cauy was targeting two different specimens in 2020, a Typical that might’ve taped in the mid-180s and a Non-typical he’d been watching for six years.
“I called the Non-typical Flyer because he had three tines that seemed to fly off his main beams (the lowest is actually a drop tine),” he told John Phillips, who’s writing the story for Rack magazine. “I didn’t take him during the early years because, despite his unusual antlers, he wasn’t very big.”
The deer’s shed antlers indicated its 2018 rack would’ve tallied about 153 inches. The ones Cauy found in February 2020 were markedly bigger.
“We got more photos of Flyer that summer, and his antlers had really exploded by then. The rack wasn’t very wide, but the tines were thick and tall,” he said.
Cauy spent the first three weeks of the season going after the big Typical. When a chilly Oct. 5 arrived, he was ready to take on a new challenge and change of scenery.
A still-young, 160-inch buck was the first deer to arrive. While pondering whether to shoot it, he spotted Flyer moving through the trees.
Eventually, the huge whitetail was within 15 feet of the astonished hunter, who watched it for several minutes before drawing his bow. The animal was so close that the arrow hit a little high, piercing only a single lung.
Cauy recovered the deer the next day, too late to salvage any meat, but at least the coyotes had not touched the cape forward of its shoulders.
The antlers have not yet been taped for Buckmasters.
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