Seth Bowman observes the opening day of Oklahoma rifle season like any official national holiday: he takes off work. Then he celebrates by heading into the woods an hour before daylight.
When Seth bought a house on an acre of land in northeastern Oklahoma, area residents told him that only does visited that property. But four months later, he found an 18-point beauty in his crosshairs. The 27-year-old industrial painter from Ponca City brought it down with one shot on opening day of gun season, 2025.
Some might say he was lucky that the trophy stepped onto his little piece of land. But quick thinking, not luck, brought the buck to him.
“Apparently, nobody knew about this buck,” says Seth. “I had been seeing him on camera for two months. Earlier, during muzzleloader season, I heard rumors about a giant being harvested, which crushed my hopes. But out of the blue, he was back. I was ready for him on Nov. 22. I was in position that morning an hour before daylight until two hours after sunrise with both my bow and rifle. I passed on a 14-point with potential for next year. Within 30 seconds, I heard a gunshot. I found out later that was a doe.”
In the past year, Seth says, he’s seen, 25 different bucks use his property, partly due to a food plot with beets, carrots, turnips and clover.
“I copied what the deer were eating in my neighbors’ garden,” he says. I also keep a kiddy pool filled for the deer to come in and drink in the hot weather.”
Since the rut was in full swing, Seth knew that food wasn’t enough to lure a mature buck, so he decided to use the mating instinct to his advantage.
“I realized that, if I wanted to compete with the does, I’d better put down a powerful lure,” he says.
Seth left the blind, which sits about three feet higher than the food plot, and risked being seen (or scented) while he walked to his house for his doe-in-heat spray.
“I doused the tall, blue stem grass around my blind, out to the fences and along the fence line. Then I soaked a scent rope and hung it from a tree, so it dangled about four feet off the ground.”
To escape the 90-degree temperature inside the blind, he called it quits and only returned three hours before dark.
“I went back out about 3 p.m. and I still was cooking and sweating in there. I started to get antsy.”
After weeks of observing and patterning the visitors to his property, Seth knew that bucks would show up 90 to 30 minutes before legal shooting ended. If the bucks didn’t arrive, the does would come in a group, and a buck would follow them, but not till right at dark.
“I’ve seen it happen every day for three weeks. I watch them from my blind or standing at my back yard fence. Sometimes, I would lean up against a garden shed to watch, and the trees hid me.”
Seth looked at the time. He wanted to leave, but not if he’d spook the does. He had gathered up his gear. His gun and phone were already clamped to a tripod.
“A voice in my head told me to open the window one more time. Off to the right, I saw antlers stand up in the grass and beeline it to the fence line then run along the fences to my property, smelling doe pee on the grass. Once he hit that scent, he jumped a fence onto my side. He was scenting my rope, three yards off the fence.”
The buck was 31 yards from Seth’s position. Its full attention was on the doe pee when Seth fired into its right side and found both lungs. The buck fell over and expired right there.
“I was the calmest I’d ever been with a deer in the scope — it happened so fast. I wasn’t shaking at all,” Seth says.
“I must have called a dozen people and my taxidermist, and I made a video. I had the wherewithal to say it was a 200-inch deer.”
Seth is no stranger to making videos. He has almost 200,000 social media followers on TikTok, posting content under the name sethdakota. He is a wiz at spotting discarded antlers. In the last five years, he’s picked up 573 sheds across Kansas, New Mexico and Oklahoma. He also tells viewers his approach to measuring antlers, which lines up exactly with Buckmasters’ own. He reasons that a rack should get credit for every inch a deer grew, with no deductions just because the right and left sides aren’t identical. He appreciates that Buckmasters gives every hunter the full value of what’s on top of a buck’s head.
Buckmasters scorer Ron Salafia measured the Bowman buck. He taped it at 200 3/8 inches, putting it in the Buckmasters Trophy Record Book.