Nearly 225 Inches of Gristle
By Mike Handley
An avowed meat hunter made short work of christening his new bow during Iowa’s 2024 archery season, taking home venison with gristle that can be measured in inches.
Knoxville bowhunter Jon Pierce might’ve hoped to connect with a giant whitetail he and one of his sons had spotted that summer, but he would’ve settled for far less, perhaps even a doe, when he struck out on Oct. 8, a week into the season.
Jon and his 12-year-old son Jacob were heading home from the grocery store on June 24, when the boy spotted a very large buck running between corn and bean fields, property the Pierces have hunted for two decades.
The next drive-by sighting came in August, when a friend of Jon’s clocked the impressive whitetail.
“That was another piece of the puzzle,” said the midnight-shift maintenance worker and hog farmer. “We wound up nicknaming the deer Houdini because of how easily he disappeared.”
The third time the deer was seen was when Jon decided to go out and scout the Marion County property prior to the bow opener. He actually jumped the deer out of its bed, capturing video footage of it.
“We were just trying to figure out how to get the deer. And that trip helped reveal its triangular-shaped core area,” he explained.
When Jon awoke on Tuesday, Oct. 8, he decided to take and hang a treestand on the property, the first time he’s performed the task without a helper in many years. Rather than venture into the deer’s core area, he chose a saddle overlooking a deep and gnarly draw.
The saddle is within a Y-shaped strip of timber 10 yards off the CRP edge. It serves as a direct path from the woodlot where the buck spent its days to a horseshoe-shaped field a quarter-mile distant. The latter is traditionally a deer magnet.
“I didn’t want to chance spooking the animal again,” he said. “I didn’t think it would tolerate the pressure.”
He returned to the newly hung stand between 3:30 and 4 p.m.
“I was just hoping to see a doe,” he admitted. “Deer were scarce anyway, since we’d been hit hard by EHD. We hunt for food, mostly.
“I’m not some great hunter,” he added. “The good Lord just blessed me that day.”
An hour before sunset, Jon saw deer legs moving through the timber. Moments later, he realized the deer was a buck with a decent rack. With every subsequent glimpse, the antlers’ mass and numerous points came into focus.
When the buck stepped onto the terrace Jon had followed to reach his stand, he got an unimpeded view of the headgear and noticed the distinctively curved flyer. He knew immediately which deer he was seeing.
When the deer resumed walking, Jon drew the new bow he’d never hunted with prior to that day. And then, perhaps with a noseful of the hidden hunter, the buck stopped for a couple of minutes, nervously assessing its surroundings. The wait was so long that Jon had to let down his bow.
In doing so, the bow’s cam bumped the tree, and the deer, which was standing 34 yards away, heard it.
Jon ranged the huge-bodied deer three times before drawing his bow a second time. Amazingly, the animal stood rooted in place until the arrow was on its way.
“It felt like a good shot, but I was nervous,” he said. “I didn’t hear the thump, so I couldn’t honestly say where I hit the deer, or even if I hit it at all.”
Jon waited 20 minutes before getting down to look for the arrow and/or blood. When he found neither, he called his wife, who somehow realized that her stuttering husband, incapable of spitting out a complete sentence, must have shot Houdini.
“Come home now,” she admonished, and he took her advice.
An hour and a half after returning home, a five-minute drive, Jon and three of his four sons, along with a nephew, returned to continue looking for any sign of the deer. Jon began walking the CRP, and he soon found blood, which increased in volume as he continued forward. He found the animal 30 yards into his search.
He took the deer to his friend, taxidermist Jeremy Lee, who mounted it post haste.
“I’ve never shot a deer in October,” Jon said. “We’ve always joked about the downside of tagging out early, how we’d be bored for the rest of the season.”
Bored might be a stretch, though, since Jon also owns a small hog farm in southern Iowa. There’s little time to reflect between job and chores.
The man’s best buck prior to this one scored 153 inches, a family record that was almost topped the previous season by son David, who tagged a 150-inch 10-pointer.
Jon’s 2024 buck grosses 224 4/8 inches as a 23-pointer. They didn’t weigh the animal, but he says it was so large that it required three strong backs to load it. Its neck was so huge that it looked abnormally short. He’d planned to have it aged, but the family dog seized and absconded with the jawbone he’d removed.
He says the sway-backed and pot-bellied deer was no doubt a mature animal, at least 5 1/2 to 6 1/2 years old.