This Kansas bowhunter is a believer in trail cameras. He also knows a year can turn a good buck into a great one.
Ethan Lorance knows the value of eyes in the sky, or at least on the ground.
The 25-year-old pipefitter from Bonner Springs, Kansas, employed several trail cameras to learn as much as he could about the buck that made him a social media star in 2017.
Ethan retrieved his first trail cam photograph of the unique buck in June 2016, when it was a 5x5 with crab claw brow tines and matching kickers on its P-2s. The cameras were set up on a friend’s mostly open ground in northeastern Kansas.
“The rack carried decent mass, too, but I decided to pass up the buck,” he said. “I was hunting a different deer on a different farm.”
The following year, he didn’t collect an image of the matching-kickers buck until September, and he was thrilled to see the rack had grown substantially. He was so smitten that he set up four additional cameras on the property.
Those four units gave Ethan an idea of where the whitetail was bedding. At least he knew which directions the deer was most likely to travel at different times of day. The time-stamps gave him the most valuable information.
Ethan erected a 16-foot ladder stand at the edge of a tree-studded draw, between areas the buck frequented. He needed a southeast or southwest wind to bowhunt it, or his scent would be carried straight down the tree line. With any south wind, his scent would be blown into the unpicked soybean field.
His first hunt from the setup was uneventful.
The second time the wind cooperated was Thursday, Oct. 12. The temperature had dipped a couple of days earlier, too.
He checked the nearest camera’s memory card en route to his ladder, which he climbed at 5:00. The buck had passed through at 6:30 a.m., which gave him hope the animal was bedded nearby.
It was a slow evening, but Ethan’s boredom was forgotten when he glimpsed a deer at 60 yards. He wasn’t absolutely certain, but he thought it could be the buck he wanted.
He sent text messages to his hunting buddy, Isaac Nills, but they didn’t arrive in Isaac’s inbox until much later.
Twenty minutes after he sent the first message saying he thought he’d spotted his 200-incher, he saw the flick of a tail. Attached to it was his target buck, skirting the opposite side of the draw at about 40 yards.
“It took the buck 30 minutes to travel 30 yards,” he said. “It was hitting every tree. Making scrapes. I’d say he made four of five, at least.”
When the deer stepped into a clear lane at 32 yards, Ethan loosed his arrow.
Ethan thought the deer was a 200-incher. He realized he’d seriously underestimated the size when he was 20 feet from the downed animal, which had run 80 yards before expiring.
He had two hours to admire the antlers before his friends arrived to help him drag the 51/2-year-old whitetail out of there. It was never weighed, but Ethan says it was easily 10 to 20 pounds larger than the average bucks there. It had bulked up substantially — particularly in its neck and chest — in only a week’s time.
Ethan hadn’t planned to share his deer with the world, but a buddy posted it on Facebook. The attention was immediate and huge.
The rack’s green B&C score was 2133/8 inches.
“I really don’t care what it scores, to be honest,” says the bowhunting purist. “I’ve passed up a lot of deer, holding out for mature ones. I’ll take not shooting anything over taking an immature deer.”
Mission accomplished.
This article was published in the Jan/Feb edition of Rack Magazine. Subscribe today to have Rack Magazine delivered to your home.
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