Long-standing Illinois record withstands first real threat. Here’s the story behind the new No. 2.
As soon as Jeff Heimann decided to point his shotgun at the bobble-headed buck instead of the doe he’d originally intended to shoot, he stopped paying attention to its antlers. For all he knew, he was about to take an easy poke at a 10-pointer — decent, but unremarkable.
The deer was less than 40 yards from him.
Jeff was halfway to the fallen whitetail before he realized he’d seriously misjudged its rack. And for the next several minutes, his mind was not that of a 51-year-old railroad car inspector and veteran hunter.
Standing over the impossibly huge deer, he could only gawk, open-mouthed. Thinking in complete sentences was a struggle, and speaking was almost impossible.
Such are the ingredients for a best-ever hunt. And his was also his shortest.
When Jeff arrived at his friends’ property in Marion County, Illinois, before sunrise that Sunday, Nov. 20, he was surprised to learn he was the only person there.
He’d hunted until noon the previous Friday, which was opening day of the state’s first 2016 firearms season. Rain kept him indoors for the rest of that day.
When he returned Saturday afternoon, he saw a lot of does. “The young bucks were chasing, giving them fits,” he added.
For his final hunt of the three-day season, he decided to sit in a ladder stand he’d erected for his oldest daughter 10 years earlier. Facing southwest, it’s situated in a funnel historically frequented by deer. He was at the bottomland property, which is planted in CRP trees, at 5:45.
“It was a perfect day for deer hunting,” he said. “The temperature was 38 or 39 degrees.”
At almost 6:30, he saw a doe slinking through the shadows. Because there was no fawn with her, he thought about filling his tag and freezer.
While waiting for the doe to step clear of some brush and trees, Jeff heard something else coming and turned to see a buck, walking and oddly cocking its head.
“It didn’t seem like much at the time,” he said, referring to the antlered noise that stole his attention away from venison.
“When the buck got to within 40 yards, it just disappeared. I know now it was standing in just the right position to be shielded by a tree. But I was clueless at the time. I kept thinking Where did it go?” Jeff said. “I was frantic.
“When the buck reappeared — stepped clear of the tree — it was facing me,” he continued. “Even then, I just thought it was a decent 8- or 10-pointer. I stopped looking at the rack after that. I had no idea it was the big one my friends had gotten on their trail cameras a half-mile from there.
“I actually thought Okay, I’ll happily settle for this one,” he added.
With that thought, he raised his semiautomatic shotgun, peered through his Nikon scope, and squeezed the trigger. The animal collapsed a millisecond after the boom.
Soon afterward, a 4-pointer walked to within 10 feet of the downed buck. It stayed around for at least five minutes, looking at it, before meandering down the path the doe had taken.
Not long after the forkhorn disappeared, Jeff saw his buck’s leg move for the last time.
He realized he’d misjudged the size of the antlers en route to the deer, and he froze almost midstride. Only then did he realize why the buck had been tilting its head this way and that. It couldn’t get through the trees otherwise!
“All I could do … all I could think … was No way, no way, no way, no way,” he said. “And then it was like a voice inside my head said: You CAN touch it. And so I did. Next, a voice said: You CAN count the points.
“I couldn’t believe how many there were. I said THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, over and over, several hundred times,” he added. “I was in a state of shock. This kind of thing just doesn’t happen to me.”
As soon as he regained his composure, Jeff reached for his phone.
“I first texted my wife, Wendy, and sent her a picture with a note saying ‘Look what I got!’ She responded with ‘Wow, is that THE ONE?’
“I answered ‘Yep’ and asked if I could have it mounted. She said ‘Yes, but it’s too big for the house.’ She then suggested I could hang the mount in my garage,” he continued.
“Then she texted back and said she’d always wanted a sunroom on the back of house,” Jeff added. “So I guess I’m building a sun room.”
With the mount’s future settled, Jeff texted his friend, Mike Wesselman, who arrived soon thereafter with son Austin.
“We probably took 60 pictures,” Jeff said. “I happened to look up and, for the first time, noticed my truck. It was only about 150 yards away, where I’d parked it on a dead-end road.”
The brothers who own the land had retrieved the first trail camera photograph of the buck on Dec. 13, 2015. It was big enough to tempt any hunter, but substantially smaller.
“The amount of antler this deer packed on from one year to the next is amazing,” Jeff said.
While large up top, the animal was small in body. Jeff said he was able to drag it easily with one hand.
“I’d say it might’ve weighed 165 pounds, at the most,” he said. “It had small hooves, and it even had a small head. From the corner of its nostril to its eye was probably only 4 inches.”
This article was published in the June 2017 edition of Rack Magazine. Subscribe today to have Rack Magazine delivered to your home.
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