Ernest Hemingway wasn’t a fan of cordon bleau writing. He was more of a meat-and-potatoes storyteller, a believer in the sparseness of words.
Ohio’s Jason Bowering can relate.
“I’m not a good storyteller. You know what I mean? I climbed a tree, the buck came out, I shot it, and it was big,” the deer hunter laughed.
Jason’s telling is modest rather than crafty, however. He left out the part about mastering the intricacies of hunting public land in a faraway state for nearly 30 years, more than half his life. He also didn’t mention how he got a second chance minutes after sending the first crossbow bolt over the unsuspecting whitetail’s back.
Jason and his gang began hunting public ground in Kansas in 1995, the second year the Sunflower State made tags available to nonresidents. The group includes his brother, a cousin and a couple of friends, all from New York. They rent motel rooms for the week, sometimes longer.
The 51-year-old mechanic from Bellevue, Ohio, has burned only five tags in three decades, but seeing so many “trigger-tripping” bucks — in or out of range — is enough to keep him going back.
In 2024, Jason arrived in Kansas on Nov. 2, a Saturday. Years of hunting there have convinced him to schedule a weeklong vacation, with his wife’s blessing, for the first week of November.
“It doesn’t really matter if we hit the rut or whether we see the pre- or post-rut,” he said. “There’s always plenty of activity then.”
The first few days are mostly spent scouting for buck sign. The party spends the first and last hours of daylight in stands, but they’re otherwise reconnoitering.
Deer activity was heavy that week. The 2- and 3-year-old bucks were moving throughout the day.
On Wednesday, Nov. 6, Jason lugged a lightweight hang-on stand into a big CRP field where there were at least two small and climbable trees within a fencerow. After setting it about 10 feet off the ground, he settled in and watched numerous respectable bucks. The largest wore an almost white rack, but it was well beyond crossbow range.
He watched the sunrise from the same setup the next morning.
“At first gray light, when I could see only 20 or 30 yards, I heard a deer blow,” he said. “I thought it had smelled me at first, but then I realized the wind was in my favor, and the deer was almost directly upwind.”
As the sky slowly brightened, Jason made out a deer shape at 130 yards, and his binoculars rarely left his eyes as the animal began following a ditch toward him.
“It took an hour for the buck to move 90 yards,” he said. “It was nonchalant, but cautious. When it was within 45 yards, it turned to go across the field. That was a real heart-sinking moment.
“At one point, it was 65 yards out and going away, but then turned back toward the gulch. When it was at 45 again, I took the shot and saw the bolt fly over its back. The deer immediately bolted around a bush.
“I wasn’t prepared for that scenario,” he admitted. “My crossbow’s cocking rope was in my pocket, and the bolts were in my backpack.”
Fortunately, the buck remained behind the bush long enough for Jason to re-cock and reload his bow. When all was ready, he noticed a tree shaking violently behind the bush.
“That deer had no idea what had happened,” he said. “It was tearing up that tree. When it finished, it came back around the bush. I was ready to take an identical 45-yard shot; had even planned to aim lower. But the buck walked even closer, to within 22 yards.
“At that point, I had to shoot quickly. Another step, and the deer would’ve been obscured,” he added.
Jason kept track of the running whitetail by the bolt’s nock, although seeing the glowing spot bounce up and down bothered him.
“I’m thinking something went really wrong. That bolt should’ve blown through the animal,” he said.
The deer ran in an almost straight line for 110 yards before making a hard right turn. Thirty yards into the change of course, Jason lost sight of it.
Jason called his cousin Darren repeatedly, but got no answer. He sat for about two and a half hours before his cousin joined him, and the guys took up the trail at noon.
They found no blood whatsoever the first 110 yards, but the back half of his bolt was lying on the ground where the deer veered. Thirty yards farther — about where Jason had lost sight of the fleeing deer — they found a lot of blood, but only single drops thereafter.
“I was ready to call for a dog, but my cousin said the deer was walking and looking for a place to bed down and die,” Jason said. “He said he’d bet me anything the deer was within 40 yards of where we stood.”
He won that bet.
The 2024 trip was the best the five guys have ever had in Kansas. Four of them wound up with bucks.
Buckmasters measurer Brian Watt taped the rack when Jason returned to Ohio. The clean 5x5 tallied 189 4/8 inches as a Perfect, thanks largely to tine length. The P2s are 12 and 13 2/8 inches long, and the P3s are 12 5/8 and 10 5/8 inches.
