Luck of the Draw

Donnie Jenkins knows the importance of being in the right place at the right time.

The deer he shot in 2024 is a constant reminder.

Donnie, pal Dennis Lilly and stepson Hunter Long have hunted the same 450 acres in Albemarle County, Virginia, since 2016. He and his stepson, the only bowhunters, have about eight trail cameras stationed around the farm.

In 2019, they began amassing mostly nighttime images of an impressive whitetail with which they all be came obsessed. It wasn’t until 2023, however, that anyone actually saw the animal.

That opportunity was handed Donnie, who spotted the dream buck following a doe within a patch of mountain laurel. Both were in range.

“It was just too risky,” the 63-year-old said. “I didn’t have a good shot, and I didn’t want to wound the buck and not find it. Besides, there wouldn’t have been much left, I’m sure. We have a lot of coyotes here.”

The (then) transportation department supervisor didn’t see the deer again for a whole year.

Donnie hadn’t planned to hunt on Saturday, Oct. 26, but his stepson called Friday night and asked him to join him.

“When we got there, I gave Hunter first choice of where to go. Being there was his idea, after all, and he’d driven all the way up from Lynchburg,” Donnie said. “For me, it was really just luck of the draw.”

Donnie wound up going to a ladder stand. Soon after he settled in around 6:00, he saw a deer. That it wore antlers was all he could decipher.

“It was too dark to tell. I wanted to grunt, to do something to lure the deer closer, but then I thought I’d probably just spook it. I wound up doing nothing, hoping it might come back,” he said.

An hour and a half later, the bull of the woods slipped out of some mountain laurel en route to a nearby scrape.

“I started shaking,” Donnie admitted. “I didn’t want to blow it, so I tried to use a rangefinder. But the deer never stopped moving, and I couldn’t acquire it.

“I finally just picked an open spot at around 50 yards. When the buck’s nose entered that spot, I grunted, it stopped, and I squeezed the crossbow’s trigger,” he continued.

“I saw the glowing nock as the bolt hit home, and the deer took off running. About 50 or 60 yards out, it made a hard right turn, and the bolt snapped. It just fell out. That’s when I began worrying about penetration,” he said.

With no intent to pursue the deer, Donnie got down and went as quietly as possible to the bolt, which had been sheared in half. He jabbed it in the ground near the first blood he saw, and then he returned to the truck to change clothes and text Hunter.

Within the hour, his stepson arrived with his electric bike and a towable deer cart. They had no trouble finding the whitetail, which would later garner second place (among bucks with 12 or more points) in the state’s contest.

By Buckmasters’ yardstick, the antlers tallied 185 4/8 inches and fell into the Regular (formerly typical) category. Anders and Jubille Blixt measured the 15-pointer — a mainframe 6x6 with two small stickers and protrusion off its left brow.

This will be Donnie’s 10th shoulder mount. He also has numerous skulls and racks inside his Troy, Virginia, home.

“I’d dreamt about that deer since 2019,” Donnie said. “I knew 2024 might be our last chance to get it. The landowner had died of cancer, and the farm had been sold to a guy in Wisconsin. We stood to lose permission to hunt it in January.”

He needn’t have worried, however. So impressed with the way the trio had maintained the property, the new owner asked them to continue.