Rack Magazine

Quick thinking and topography allow farmer a second chance at dream buck.

If you blow a hunt or spook a buck, you might still be able to salvage an opportunity if you know the land you’re hunting and have a good idea of where that whitetail wants to go. Terrain permitting, heading a deer off at the pass could be the second chance for which you’ll otherwise pine.

Raymond Hoverson of Atchison, Kansas, learned this lesson in 2007, eight years after he began hunting.

There weren’t many deer on his Doniphan County farm in the 1990s, so he spent most of his time afield going after the plentiful geese and pheasants.

“When I married my wife, Cindy, her farm was farther south than mine,” he said. “Hers was in the same county, but had completely different terrain, including timber, bluffs, valleys and creeks. There were deer to hunt on Cindy’s land.”

That’s why he began hunting them.

“Today, we hunt 160 acres of timbered creek bottom on my wife’s farm. There are row crops on one side and steep bluffs belonging to a neighbor on the other side,” Raymond said.

“The deer often live and bed in those high bluffs. They come down into the creek bottom and travel through the timber to reach our row crops,” he continued.

The Hoversons planted mostly soybeans in 2007, though they also raise corn and hay.

On Dec. 2 that year, long after the beans had been cut, Raymond grabbed his rifle and headed out to a ground blind at 5:30 a.m.

“The temperature was only 10 degrees, and the wind chill was below zero,” he said, adding that the wind was blowing out of the north.

Raymond expected the deer to filter down from the bluffs behind him, cross the creek, and then go out into the soybean field to feed. He was accustomed to seeing deer skylined along the bluff tops before emerging below, on his level.

“Just at daylight, I spotted a herd of 15 deer, including an 8-pointer and another that might score about 180 inches, coming over the top of the bluff,” Raymond remembered. “Since I was upwind of them, they stopped. I was sure they smelled me.

“The big buck at the back of the herd was visible for only an instant,” he continued. “The entire herd whirled immediately and went back over the bluff.”

Knowing the deer weren’t going to be denied food that very cold morning, Raymond guessed the animals would come down the bluff at a different point and follow the next nearest path to the bean field. He quickly gathered up his equipment, including his bolt-action .30-30, and struck out for blind no. 2.

“I like the .30-30 because it’s a great brush gun,” he says. “If I have to shoot though brush, I know that caliber will penetrate the brush and put a buck down.”

Raymond moved deliberately, as quietly as possible, down the hill to the other blind. He was torn between the urge to run in order to beat the deer and to slink so as not to spook them.

He must have found the right combination of speed and caution because they had not reached the field before he did.

“I had been in my stand for only 15 minutes or so when I spotted the herd walking single file down to the trail that led to the soybean field,” Raymond said.

Each deer passed within 45 yards of his blind, including a nice 8-pointer that might’ve scored 140 inches. Raymond chose not to shoot it only because he’d seen the much bigger one at daylight. But the big buck wasn’t with the group the second time.

After the herd moved out into the field to snuffle up missed beans, Raymond waited another 45 minutes in his ground blind.

“I assumed the big buck was spooked so badly that it either returned to the west or was waiting until the herd reached the soybean field and began feeding before joining them,” he said.

Although Raymond had trail cameras at several locations on the farm, he’d never retrieved a photograph of the monstrous buck he’d spotted at first light.

While waiting on the big buck to show, Raymond second-guessed his decision to pass up the 4x4. The 45-yard shot would’ve been a piece of cake.

He pushed doubt from his mind only by remembering the bigger buck’s substantial rack.

“I knew I’d done the right thing,” he said, “but I wondered if I’d ever see that monster again.”

Finally, Raymond’s patience was rewarded. He saw the big buck above him on the same trail the rest had traveled. This time, Raymond was downwind of the herd, and he hadn’t spooked any of the feeding deer.

They were his decoys.

“When I spotted my dream buck on the trail to the field, it had its nose in the air, smelling to see if it could pick up my human odor from the ground blind I’d been in earlier that morning,” he said.

Before deer season opened, when Raymond was setting up his two blinds, he’d trimmed shooting lanes about 70 yards long and 10 yards wide in the timber, giving him two windows. At the end of each shooting lane was about a 10-foot opening.

Once Raymond spotted the whitetail, he shouldered his rifle waited for the deer to walk into one of the lanes. He had no idea how many points it had, just that the rack was tall, wide and dark.

“When the big buck stepped out into that shooting lane, I aimed about 10 inches behind his shoulder and squeezed the trigger,” Raymond said. “I knew I’d made a good hit on the buck. But to my surprise, it didn’t move, at first. When it did, it burst forward about 15 or 20 yards before falling.”

Raymond reloaded and waited in his ground blind to make sure the buck didn’t stand. When it was clear the deer was dead, he went to it and thought, This buck is the one I’ve been hunting for all my life!

This article was published in the August 2016 edition of Rack Magazine. Subscribe today to have Rack Magazine delivered to your home.

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