Adam Wood knows all too well that bullets in a box don’t put venison on the table or antlers on the wall. While his first shot knocked his career-best whitetail off its feet and might have done sufficient damage to permanently douse its flame, he wasted no time in sending second and third rounds downrange to ensure it wasn’t going to pull a Lazarus.
He could afford another box of ammo, but he didn’t have another 45 years to wait for opportunity to knock a second time.
The veteran hunter from Tompkinsville, Kentucky, spent opening day of the 2020 modern gun season glued to a dove stool. During that morning hunt, he got a couple of very quick glimpses of at least one above-average buck.
Although he was suitably impressed, Adam didn’t return to the woods that evening because of bad weather. Neither did he venture out Sunday.
He spent Monday morning, Nov. 16, in a ground blind he’d erected prior to the season. By lunchtime, he’d seen only one small buck chasing a doe. En route to his truck, however, he jumped another buck and doe that had bedded down in a brush pile 30 yards from his parked vehicle.
The rut was definitely underway.
“After checking on some cattle and getting a bite to eat, I decided to move the blind,” he told Dale Weddle, who’s writing the story for Rack magazine.
Following his instinct, he set it closer to where he’d seen the opening-day stud. He hadn’t got a long look at it, but what little he saw made an impression.
It made an even bigger impression the second time, about 20 minutes before dark.
Adam first spotted a doe running about 150 yards distant. Operating on the hunch she wasn’t stretching her legs for no reason, he raised his .30-06 and slipped off the safety. Her pursuer – none other than the giant he’d been hoping to see – was about 100 yards behind her.
He never expected the single-minded deer to even notice the blind, but the buck certainly did. Keenly aware the shape wasn’t supposed to be there, it skidded to a halt and stared almost open-mouthed at it.
“Before I could settle the crosshairs, the deer took off again,” Adam said. “I followed him two jumps with the rifle, and then I squeezed the trigger.”
He hit the animal and knocked it down, but he shot it again to anchor it. Halfway to his prize, he administered the coup de grace.
With a Buckmasters score of 202 6/8 inches, Adam’s 18-pointer is the second-largest, rifle-taken whitetail known to come out of Monroe County, Kentucky.
– Photos courtesy Adam Wood
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