18-year-old Jakob Lewellen was having trouble seeing deer at his usual spot, so he decided to test his luck on a friend's 30-acre parcel.
The Clark County property features two rock quarries and is surrounded by a creek with a thick bedding area in the bottom, which is where Jakob harvested this Hoosier hammer in November.
"I saw him for the first time but didn't know he was that big," Jakob told Buckmasters. "He stuck his head out the woodline right at dark, looked around for a second but never came out. I didn't have my rangefinder on me, but I'd guess he was about 300 yards away."
Jakob had his first encounter with this 21-point stud on a Thursday and was leaving for a week-long hunt with some friends in Kansas that Saturday, so he only had one day to seal the deal before Indiana's 15-day rifle season ended.
Between Jakob and his two friends who've hunted the property for several years, none of them had a trail camera photo of the deer and, oddly enough, none of the neighbors were tracking it, either.
"As far as I know, nobody had picture of this deer," Jakob said. "Just a big boy that's never been seen, I guess. As far as I know he could've just moved in."
Friday afternoon, around 4 o'clock, Jakob set up in a ladder stand overlooking the thick field where he'd previously seen the giant. A handful of does and two small bucks were browsing there just 30 minutes into the hunt. Jakob's target buck was the last to show, and it immediately started chasing a doe.
"As soon as I saw him I wanted to shoot, but he looked like he was coming my way so I just let him keep walking toward me chasing that doe. He got to within 150-170 yards, turned broadside and I shot, two times.
"My first shot hit low in the shoulder, and it didn't even seem to phase him," Jakob continued. "I knew I hit him because I heard that whack!, but he just stood there. A 6-pointer came back out toward the doe he was chasing, and it chased that 6-pointer off and came back to the doe. That's when I shot again."
Buckmasters scorer Steven Taylor measured the wallhanger at 230 6/8 inches for Buckmasters Trophy Records, making it Indiana's fourth largest whitetail in BTR's Irregular category for centerfire rifle.
"The coolest thing was watching him chase off that younger buck after I'd already shot him once. I've never seen anything like it," Jakob said. "I've been hunting my whole life and only taken three bucks now. Never say never, but it's going to be hard to top this."
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