Impromptu Hunt Yields More Than Jerky
By Mike Handley
Prior to Nov. 23, Josh Edwards’ sons regarded deer hunting as little more than a very slim chance to shoot something bigger than the small game inhabiting the five acres surrounding their home in Fairland, Indiana.
Now, every time the family passes a copse of trees, the youngest pleads for his father to stop and ask the landowner for permission to hunt there.
There’s a reason for that.
In September, a grateful customer gave their dad access to a 250-acre farm in Johnson County, 40 minutes from the Edwards’ home.
“He asked if I hunted, and I said yes, but mostly public land. Then he offered the farm to me,” said the 32-year-old excavator. “I didn’t even know he had another farm, because the one we were on was just one big field.”
Josh was thrilled, even when he learned a couple of other hunters were allowed to hunt the tract. Being one of three on 250 acres was a lot more comforting than slipping into over-pressured everyman’s land.
He didn’t have time to do much scouting before he took his two sons — 7-year-old Liam and Kenan, 12 — to the tract with a crossbow.
Kenan had accompanied Josh to public land a couple of times the previous season, but they hadn’t seen anything.
“For him, it was boring,” Josh said. “Plus, I never felt comfortable.”
The Edwards’ return to the private farm on Nov. 23, during the state’s firearms season, wasn’t planned. They didn’t leave home until 3:30.
“I was working on a machine, and Liam came in and said he wanted to go hunting. I said, ‘Okay, go ask your mother,’” Josh said. “It was that quick. There wasn’t even a plan.”
When the guys arrived at the farm, they walked across a freshly harvested, 30-acre cornfield to reach the thick strip of woods separating the roadside field from another. When father and sons hit the second field, he steered the kids under the canopy of a large osage tree about 15 feet into the stubble.
A fresh scrape was about 30 yards distant.
Josh sat on a stool with his single-shot slug-spitter resting on a monopod. Preferring a bow, he rarely hunts with a gun, and he’d never shot a deer with the 12-gauge. The boys sat on their jackets, on the ground.
“It wasn’t cold that day. I think it was in the 40s or 50s,” Josh said.
Soon after arriving, they saw a pack of coyotes, and then a couple of does in the distance. Close to 5:00, a large buck appeared like a silent jack-in-the-box. One minute, there was nothing …
“The deer was only 20 yards from us. The boys had already locked eyes on it when I saw it,” he said.
“After I shot, it ran about 25 yards and collapsed. The boys were pumped. They immediately rose and started walking toward it, and I had to tell them to wait. That lasted about 15 minutes,” he chuckled.
Since the corn had been harvested, Josh was able to drive close to the deer. He and Kenan wrangled it into the truck, and then Josh texted the other hunters on the property, who joined them.
The top-heavy buck — Josh’s largest, by far — was relatively small in body. It dressed out at only 120 pounds. The taxidermist told him it was 4 1/2 years old.
Josh’s only other buck was a 6-pointer he’d taken 11 years earlier, not long after he began hunting. He’d shot only does — beloved jerky on the hoof — after that.
“There’s not much to the story,” he said. “I had no history with this deer; no cameras or encounters.”
The amount of antler overshadows any lack of detail, however.
Buckmasters measurer Jim Moore scored the thick-beamed 14-pointer at 202 5/8 inches. The semi-irregular rack’s bases were 6 3/8 and 6 2/8 inches. As of this writing, it’s the leader in the big buck contest sponsored by Highsmith Guns in nearby Greenfield, Indiana.