MO Public-Land Giant by Boat
By Mark Melotik
We’d guess relatively few hunts for outsized bucks begin with a nail-biting predawn lake run in a well-tuned fishing boat, picking slowly through a snag-filled stump field in inky, snowy darkness. But that exact, stealthy approach worked handsomely last Nov. 26, for Missouri’s Larry Ruebel and his 11-year-old son Landon.
The pair was hunting a large public tract in Macon County, where a few days earlier they’d found a honey hole of fresh deer sign. The stretch was littered with outsized rubs, fresh scrapes and beaten trails. When Larry realized the brushy, sign-filled stretch paralleled a lake, he immediately hatched a plan to return via boat.
The crafty move eliminated the need for the lengthy mile-and-a-half hike required to get back into the spot via land.
“I’ve got a 17-foot Bass Tracker,” he said. “It was cold and snowing and dark, and we were literally getting stuck on stumps that seemed to be everywhere. You couldn’t see them because so many were just under the surface. It took us about a good hour to go just a mile and a half on idle speed.”
While hunting the previous week, both Ruebel and his son had camped out in the same area, a stretch that produced a 7-pointer for the third member of the hunt party, Ruebel’s father-in-law Dave Murray, 65. But both Ruebel and his son had gone deerless.
Toward the end of that first week, while ranging far into the public area, the father-son duo had finally found the sign-laden area they’d hoped for. At that point Larry made the call to take advantage of the extended hunt that was set for the area in 2023, which would run a few days past Thanksgiving — the historical end to the area’s firearms season.
“So we came home for Thanksgiving, then hooked up the boat and headed back up there Friday morning,” Ruebel recalled.
That Friday, the pair used the boat to haul a double-seat ladder stand in to their newfound hotspot. The next morning, after the eerie predawn run noted previously, the pair found the promising area would not disappoint.
After just 15 minutes on stand, the duo watched as a pair of does ran straight toward them. With a freezer needing filling and a pocketful of doe tags, Larry made a good shot on one of them. But the action was just beginning.
“Not 30 minutes later, two more does came through, and Landon shot the lead doe. I dropped the one behind her,” Ruebel said.
About 45 minutes later, still more action. The pair glimpsed several does about 100 yards out, and then Larry caught a glimpse of a many-tined rack.
“I just saw points going everywhere, but he was going in and out of view,” Ruebel recalled. “Had he been coming in our direction I would have let Landon take the shot, but he was quartering away from us and leaving pretty quickly.”
Ruebel said he thinks his first shot at the buck missed, but as it began running away, he felt his second shot with his 7mm Rem Mag was a good one. That was mostly confirmed when the buck seemed to disappear, while does scattered in all directions.
After waiting an hour on stand, the pair descended to track the buck. Larry didn’t go far when he jumped the buck from the last place he’d seen it, hesitating briefly with his follow-up shot that he felt was a clean miss.
“I hesitated because it didn’t look like the same buck,” Ruebel said. “Running away from me, the rack looked too narrow, too small.”
At that point Larry made the decision to back out and take up the trail the next day. So the pair loaded two of the three does they’d shot into their boat and made their way back to camp.
The next day proved to be another good one. The pair made easy recoveries of the third doe and the buck, discovered 100 yards after it was last seen. A brief glimpse of the fallen buck and Larry quickly called Landon over before inspecting it further.
“I call it Me and Landon’s Buck,” Larry said. “I wouldn’t have been there without him. I wanted him to see a big buck, so I hauled him out in the middle of nowhere. And after finding those big rubs and scrapes, I knew we had a good chance.”
The tale of the tape confirms what a special deer it is. The public-land giant has a BTR score of 210 4/8 in the Centerfire Rifle Irregular category.
Interestingly, the rack’s inside spread measures just 11 4/8 inches, and just 1 6/8 inches tip-to-tip — which no doubt contributed to Ruebel second-guessing his follow-up shot. But the rack holds 20 scorable points and solid mass that it carries all the way out. Main beams measure 21 and 20 4/8 inches, with brows stretching 9 7/8 and 7 5/8 inches, and bases taping 6 4/8 and 6 inches.