Big-woods bowhunters would drive past the land Jon Landwehr hunts near Russell, Kansas. The agricultural tracts are mostly treeless, which might be ok if you’re packing a rifle, but a bit like throwing a dart at a board if you’re hoping to pick a bow-friendly vantage point.
Deer rarely wander willy-nilly through a sea of milo. They traverse these fields by following drainage ditches and swales that aren’t visible from a distance. A world-class whitetail, even a whole herd of deer, could be within spitting distance, and a person might never know it.
Jon knows all about the terrain 82 miles south of the country’s geographic center. He also understands that while farm deer might be more tolerant of human presence, there’s a limit to how many times a hunter can enter their domain.
This is why he bought cellular trail cameras in 2021.
On Aug. 22, one of his cams sent him an image of a unforgettable buck, over which he became obsessed. He named it Zeus.
A month later, after eyeballing Zeus in a milo field, Jon set up a corn feeder and parked a ground blind near a drainage ditch where 10-foot-tall cattails would provide additional cover.
The gigantic buck visited the feeder regularly, about 30 minutes after dark, which indicated the deer had to cover a lot of open ground to reach it at that time of day. Jon realized that if he could determine the animal’s route, he might be able to intercept it before sundown.
“Instead of hunting on opening day of bow season, I went to where I thought Zeus was bedding,” Jon told John Phillips, who’s writing the story for Rack magazine. “About 30 minutes before dark, Zeus popped his head up in the tall milo about 300 yards from me. The only thing I could see with my binoculars was his head.”
The next three evenings, Jon returned to the same spot – about a quarter-mile from the feeder, as a crow flies. Clearly, the deer was bedding in that section of milo.
“I realized I needed to be in a ground blind near the trail he took to the feeder about 20 or 30 minutes before the end of legal shooting time,” he said.
On Saturday, Sept. 18, Jon checked the wind speed and direction on his phone app. The 30- to 40-mph gusts were perfect for moving the blind closer to the waterway Zeus was following to his free nightly meal. He enlisted a friend’s help in moving the trailer-blind, and he sat inside it that very evening.
A half-hour before sundown, Jon saw Zeus coming from 200 yards. Some little bucks were ahead of him, already following the waterway.
When the giant whitetail was obscured by weeds, Jon opened his blind’s window. Fifteen minutes later, Zeus reappeared with a couple of smaller bucks.
“The smallest buck brought Zeus straight to me,” he said. “When the little one was about 10 yards from my blind, it began acting very nervous, finally turning and trotting off, but Zeus kept coming right to me.
“When Zeus was at 34 yards, I picked up my Mathews bow. He took two more steps and turned slightly, which put him quartering to me. He raised his head up to look for the little buck, and that’s when I released my arrow.”
Jon watched the deer race 175 yards into the milo. He also saw it collapse as if it had slipped on a banana peel.
The 21-pointer has been rough-scored at 235 inches.
— Read Recent Blog! The Canoe Buck: An awful lot of big buck photos have been shared on social media in the last couple of weeks, and a surprising number of them have been monstrous Typicals. Among those pushing or exceeding the 200-inch mark was a Wisconsin buck taken by Kevin Christorf.