Mom Expires Massive Backyard Buck
By Patrick Dunning
As a mother of five small children, Morgan Witek was too busy juggling babies to even entertain the thought of harvesting her first deer last season, let alone a buck of this caliber.
She'd been practicing with her Husband Chris' crossbow in the backyard for a few years, and the plan was to hunt together for the first time next season when their youngest was old enough to attend preschool.
The first Tuesday in December last year was just another routine morning at the Witek household. Chris hauled the four oldest to school after breakfast and had a work meeting to attend after. Morgan was at home on the couch with their three-year-old when their golden doodle began barking hysterically at something in the yard around 8:30 a.m.
She peeked out the kitchen window, gasped at the huge buck standing in their playground, and facetimed her husband immediately.
"Is it normal for this deer to be so close to the house, at 8:30 in the morning," Morgan asked. "He's pacing back and forth on the property and was in our playground at one point."
"Oh my gosh, that's so weird," Chris replied. "Do you know where the crossbow is? Keep an eye on him."
For the next three hours Morgan and her three-year-old sat on the kitchen table looking out the window at the noticeably old warrior until her husband got home. She then walked down the steps of the back porch, crossbow in hand, and shoulder-fired a lethal bolt to expire the 10-pointer.
"I shoot at targets in our backyard and have wanted to go hunting, but it's not something I have time for right now,” Morgan told Buckmasters. “As a mother of five, that's about the only way I'm going to kill a deer. I looked out my window and there he was. One shot and he was down."
Chris noticed several blood clots while cleaning the buck and contacted the Indiana DNR, who concurred the animal was old, although no official age has been determined. The local processor found inconsistencies with its spinal cord and back legs, and believe the deer might have been hit by a car at some point as well.
The mainframe 5x5 from Anderson County is good enough for third place in Indiana's perfect category for crossbow bucks, just two positions shy of Dustin Huff's state-record buck from 2021.
Buckmasters master scorer Jim Moore measured the whitetail 188 5/8 inches for our record book.
Four of the eight circumference measurements were over 7 inches and both P2s were over 12 inches.