Rack Magazine

The best stand is sometimes no stand at all, if you can handle long shots.

Robbie O’Bryan says he hunts 365 days a year.

The 53-year-old hunts 20 small properties, the farthest only 15 miles from his home in Marshall, Missouri. The proximity of these 16- to 200-acre parcels allows him to hunt both before and after work.

“I’m either putting out or checking trail cameras, hunting for sheds, moving stands, planting green fields or scouting every day of the year,” he explained.

In 2015, Robbie’s friend, Brenton Fowler, showed him a photograph of a mid-180s buck he’d nicknamed The Emperor. The deer was living on property adjoining 200 acres of his hunting ground.

As a show of respect for his pal, Robbie chose not to venture close to where Brenton was hunting.

During the summer of 2016, the owner of The Emperor’s core area died. When his daughter inherited the property, she made it off-limits to hunters.

“That’s when I decided to hunt close to the property line,” Robbie said.

At the end of July, Robbie put out seven trail cameras to see if The Emperor ever came to his 200 acres. It was hot that time of year. Temperatures hovered between 90 and 100 degrees, and the humidity was extremely high.

Many of the crops hadn’t been harvested to that point, so Robbie had to walk through standing soybeans and around the field edges to set up his cameras. In no time at all, he was soaking wet with sweat. His socks became sponges.

Robbie checked his cameras two weeks later. The first card he pulled contained an image of The Emperor.

He was elated the deer was still alive.

Robbie left his cameras on the 200 acres, hoping to get more pictures. But after two weeks, he had only one nighttime set from one camera. He never got a photo of the buck during daylight hours.

The property doesn’t have a lot of cover in which the deer can hide.

“No hunter in his right mind would want to hunt this property,” Robbie said, “because it’s more than 90 percent agricultural fields. There’s only one fence line that stretches for about 500 yards, and it holds only two trees suitable for a treestand.

“Since I’m primarily a bowhunter, I wanted to take The Emperor with my bow on video,” he added. “Over the years, I’ve learned that mature bucks don’t like to live in big timber. They prefer to stay in small secluded spots no one ever hunts during daylight hours, and they move primarily after dark.”

After the Missouri bow season opened on Sept. 15, the wind cooperated only three days.

Frustrated, Robbie decided not to risk spooking the deer.

“I told my wife and Brenton, ‘I’m not returning to that property until the peak of the rut, which is during gun season,’” he said.

That meant waiting until Nov. 12.

Robbie also shared news of the buck with Floyd Alsbach, another good friend.

“One of Floyd’s relatives owns property that also adjoins the 200 acres I hunt. If I couldn’t take The Emperor, I knew I’d be excited if Floyd did.

“To hunt from my stand, I needed a straight north or south wind. On Nov. 12, I had neither,” he said. “Still, I put a lawn chair in my truck, drove to the property, and sat the chair in a little ditch about 400 yards from where I hoped to see The Emperor. There were no trees around me, but the grass was about 2 feet high.

“At first light, I watched two deer through my binoculars walk under my treestand. There wasn’t enough light to determine whether they were bucks or does,” he said.

Robbie was confident he could make a 400-yard shot. He’d sighted-in his rifle 31/2 inches high at 100 yards so he could shoot dead-on at 300.

“Early that morning, I watched a deer jump over the fence onto the property I had permission to hunt, and it started walking toward me,” Robbie said. “Looking at it through my binoculars, I thought, That’s a pretty good buck.

“The whitetail soon closed the distance, trotting. When it turned almost broadside, I saw the deep forked antler on the left side of its rack. That’s when I knew I was looking at The Emperor.

“I grabbed my rifle and ranged the deer at 315 yards. I realized I had only a 10-second window to take this buck, so I made a quick shot.

“I completely missed the deer, which picked up its pace,” he continued. “I immediately bolted my rifle, picked up the buck in my scope and fired again. The recoil made me lose sight of it in the scope.

“He wasn’t more than a few feet away from the fence when I shot. If he’d made it over the fence, then I knew he’d have to cross a gravel road about 500 yards away. I made a mad dash to get to that road, hoping to find a blood trail, but there wasn’t one,” he said.

Robbie then saw three does coming out of the ditch he assumed The Emperor would’ve had to use to escape. He walked around the field to where it cornered into the woods and spotted three more does.

“After seeing the two groups of does and knowing the rut was on, I knew a big buck should have been following them,” Robbie said. “That made me hopeful.”

While walking to where the buck had been when he’d taken the second shot, Robbie spotted one side of The Emperor’s rack above the brush.

Turns out, his lawn chair in the ditch was lower than the deer, so the bullet entered behind the shoulder, passed through a lung, and then hit the spine. It collapsed almost immediately.

“When I put my hands on The Emperor’s rack, I couldn’t believe how massive his antlers were,” Robbie said. “The pictures of this buck at night didn’t show the mass or reveal his weight of about 240 pounds.

“I had so much adrenaline still in my system that I backed my truck down to where the buck fell and loaded him up by myself,” he added.

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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