This carrier of big antlers did not walk softly.
James Bishop and his son, Wyatt, knew several nice 8-pointers were roaming their Casey County, Kentucky, farm in 2016.
They were not aware that a much bigger whitetail, one James might refer to as a “lottery buck,” walked those same ridges.
Their enlightenment came on Nov. 12.
James introduced Wyatt to deer hunting when the boy was 9 or 10 years old. By the time the kid was 16, he was planting food plots and running trail cameras.
Father and son enjoy hitting the woods together in the fall, and they have the luxury of walking out their front door into good deer habitat. The hardwood ridges and creek bottoms surrounding the Bishop homestead provide food, water and good cover for a healthy population of whitetails.
The genetics are also present to produce some real monsters.
James and Wyatt had no idea one such bruiser actually lived on or passed through their place. If neighbors were getting trail cam photographs of the giant during the summer, they weren’t broadcasting the news.
When the Bishops left their house on opening morning of modern gun season, they had no inkling that one of them was about to win the deer hunting lottery.
“Three narrow ridges are within walking distance of my house,” James said. “If you hold out your hand and spread your three middle fingers, that’s what the ridges look like. Each one is only about 10 feet wide, and they slope down to a creek.
“Deer like to run those ridges,” he added.
“We went to a two-man ladder stand on one of the ridges where a trail camera had photographed several nice 8-point bucks,” James said. “Wyatt and I settled in before daylight.”
Even without the biting wind blowing across those hills, the temperature was close to freezing that morning.
“About 30 minutes after daylight, Wyatt said, ‘I’ve got to get down,’” James continued. “He went back to the house to warm up and put on some extra clothes.
“In a little while, he returned, climbed back up in the stand, and asked me if I wanted a Pop-Tart. He sat there for about 45 minutes, got cold, and then left to warm up again.
“When Wyatt came back later, I said ‘If you leave again, I’m getting down, too.’ We made it about another hour and a half until the wind kicked up some more, and then we both got down and went home,” James said.
“After we warmed up, we went back out and still-hunted along one of the other ridges. He asked me ‘What do you want to shoot?’ and I said, ‘If it doesn’t have big antlers, I’m not going to shoot it.’
“Wyatt was staying in touch with some other hunters by text, and he found out his brother-in-law had killed a buck,” he continued. “We kept walking until we found a good place to sit on the ground.
“The wind was out of the northeast. We cleared off a big spot and decided to sit about 25 feet apart and watch different directions. By then, it was about 10:30.
“After we sat down and got situated, I texted him and told him to send me a photo of the buck his brother-in-law killed. After I hit the send button, I looked over and saw him reach for his phone.
“That’s when it happened,” he continued. “I heard something big and heavy hitting the ground. I looked over to the next ridge and saw a buck 75 yards away. It was an old, heavy-looking deer.
“The buck took three or four steps, easing slowly along, and then stopped.
“I was hunting with a break-action .243 with open sights. I centered the front bead on the deer’s chest and shot.
“The buck bowed up and walked forward almost 10 yards. About that time, Wyatt shot it again. I said ‘What are you doing? I just shot him!’ He said, ‘I thought you missed!’” James said. “The buck just fell over.”
When the two hunters walked over and saw the size of the deer’s rack, they were stunned. They couldn’t believe a deer that size could have been living on their property.
Eventually, word started trickling in that some of their neighbors had retrieved trail cam pictures of the huge buck and had been keeping it under wraps.
A few days later, curiosity got the better of the two men, and they decided to do some more scouting.
“There is a steep hillside on one of the ridges close to where I shot the buck,” James said. “We found a good trail and rubs the size of two-liter bottles.
“I think it just goes to show the bigger the deer, the deeper you need to go into cover,” he said. “Next year, we’re moving a lot of our cameras and taking a completely different approach to hunting the area based on what we learned after killing the big one.”
This article was published in the December 2017 edition of Rack Magazine. Subscribe today to have Rack Magazine delivered to your home.
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