Counting points is a lot more fun than tallying votes.
Although voting in Kansas and much of the country was four hours from closing on Tuesday, Nov. 8, Dustin Norris was dying to know what exit polls were predicting. He wanted to see the map.
The redder the better, to his way of thinking.
The 35-year-old, laid-off welder was eager to see who was going to take the economy’s reins, but he also wanted to take advantage of the pre-rut.
“I was torn,” he said. “I wanted to go hunting, but I also wanted to get home and see how the election was going.”
Given the closeness of the presidential race, Dustin made the right choice – taking his crossbow to the woods – when he left HVAC school at 3:00. Knowing he had a chance at a monstrous buck helped cinch the decision.
Dustin had been collecting trail camera photographs of his target buck for two years, though he didn’t put it at the top of his wish list until 2016.
“That year, once I put my camera out and got photos of the familiar deer, I decided it was the one I would go for,” he said. “I got lots of pictures of it.”
He would later learn that a guy living a couple of miles away was also getting cam pics.
The deer must’ve spent many of its waking hours either bedded up somewhere or on the neighbor’s propery, because it sure wasn’t passing through Dustin’s place very often.
“I put in as much time as I could,” he said. “But I never saw the deer from my stand until election day.”
When Dustin left school that Tuesday, he headed for a double ladder stand tucked in the corner of an old clover field. He erected it in 2015.
The first deer he saw was a small 6-pointer that walked underneath his stand. Another buck with a broken antler chased it away.
“As soon as that show was over, I heard a ruckus and turned to see yet another buck, right beside me. It was broad daylight,” he said.
“I didn’t really know what buck it was, at first,” he continued. “But as soon as I noticed how long the brow tines were, I knew.”
Dustin had only a few seconds to act. As soon as the deer was under his stand, obviously in a hurry to further establish the pecking order, he took the 10-yard shot.
“Even if I’d been hunting with a regular bow, I could’ve drawn on that deer. It was paying no attention to me whatsoever,” he smiled.
The buck ran only 20 yards after the thwack, though Dustin didn’t witness its fall.
“I didn’t actually see it pile up, but I saw its rack leaning over as it ran down the hill. I was pretty confident it was going down,” he said.
Less than two minutes had elapsed between the sighting and the shot.
Dustin waited 45 minutes before descending his ladder and walking over to the crossbow bolt sticking in the ground.
“It was probably the easiest recovery I’ve ever had,” he said.
The whitetail was never weighed, but Dustin says it was definitely the largest he’s ever shot. Based on the three years of photographs he has of the buck, he’s guessing it was 7 or 8 years old.
This article was published in the Jan/Feb 2018 edition of Rack Magazine. Subscribe today to have Rack Magazine delivered to your home.
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