Aiden Houchins has a secret weapon, and it’s not a bow or firearm. The 18-year-old Indiana farmer with a freshly minted high school diploma knows how to lure bucks into shooting distance. Picture a path leading to a tempting buffet of whitetail favorites.
“I designed a 4-acre food plot,” Aiden says, “with a path of white clover that opens up into soybeans, with radishes and turnips closest to my tree stand. In 2024, I shot a 120-inch, 10-pointer from a stand overlooking the vegetables.
“This year, I made a point of putting out the beans in time to get plenty of rain. I plant on the 4th of July. That way, I have the last green soybeans around when everyone else’s soybeans are harvested or gone. My garden is their last food in the late season.”
Like other hunters who monitor their cameras all year, Aiden started to see his target buck — easily 25 points — in velvet in June and into summer. But the buck disappeared in September and October. Aiden hunts in an L-shaped fence row aside an 86-acre field in Henry County belonging to a friend of his family. He placed his 18-foot ladder stand in the crook of the L.
“The fence row is 12 feet wide by 300 yards long, full of honeysuckle, osage orange, and sugar maples. There’s no other woods on the property for deer to shelter. The spot was where I’d seen the buck eating soybeans throughout summer, across a road from where I shot,” says Aiden. “The truth is, that spot is almost all luck. It’s just a skinny fence row around a field where the crops are gone by deer season.”
Week two of November was the peak of the rut. The Buck showed up on Aiden’s trail cam the evening before it was shot. It was single-mindedly chasing a doe.
“Instantly, I was mad that I was not in my stand. It would have been a 15-yard shot. I started freaking out. I knew if that hot doe stayed around till morning, he’d stay, too.”
The next day was a Wednesday, and Aiden needed to convince his mother that he should skip school. So he texted his Mom (who does not hunt) with a plea that would make Ferris Buehler proud.
Mom, I need you to see this photo! Can I please skip school? This buck is what I’ve been dreaming of. Please! This is probably my only chance! Then he followed up with the trail cam photo.
At first, Ceci Houchins was hesitant. But after seeing the photo, she gave Aiden the go-ahead.
A light layer of snow remained from a snowfall two days earlier as Aiden settled in his stand in the 6 a.m. dark.
“I was planning on compound bow hunting, but since we are so busy on the farm, I didn’t have time to practice-shoot. So I opted for a crossbow.”
Right at daybreak, Aiden saw 10 deer browsing 500 yards away in the wide field of cut soybeans. They were oblivious to the distant human. An hour later, he rattled to see if his buck would close in to protect its territory.
“Instead, a couple of smaller bucks that were rutted up came closer but ended up not fighting each other. At 8:30, I heard sticks cracking on an adjoining property behind me. I turned. There was a doe and my buck.”
The doe paced from one side of the tree line to the next, eating berries. She bedded down for 15 minutes and the buck tended her.
Aiden waited.
“At 10 a.m. I dropped my range finder. Luckily it made no noise because I had so many leaves under me. That went on till 11:30. Anyway, he was on another property, so I had no legal shot.”
Finally, the doe decided to jump the 4-foot, rickety, barbed wire fence onto Aiden’s side, and the buck followed. She bedded down again.
Without a range finder, he estimated the shot distance at 30 yards. “That guess must have been wrong,” he says, “because I shot and the buck ran off for just a minute, but came back. She stayed down like nothing happened. I thought I had ruined my chance. It looked like I had hit him in no man’s land, in his left shoulder. He was so into the rut that he didn’t feel it. When he came back, he went away from the danger, which pushed him toward me,” Aiden says.
The buck looked around, confused, walking till it was 10 yards away, giving Aiden a precious second chance and a true heart shot.
“This time, he ran about 80 yards onto a neighboring property, to the east. I called a grandson of the property owner and got permission to retrieve my buck,” Aiden says.
“When I got close enough to see the antlers, my reaction was total disbelief. I phoned my cousin Dallas, who’d said he wanted to retrieve the buck with me.”
The hunt became a party back at home as family members from all over arrived to admire and hug and congratulate. Needless to say, Aiden’s Mom was among the proudest.
Buckmasters scorers Dean Brandt and Hunter Schmittou taped this buck’s rack for a score of 232 6/8 inches.
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