Keith Wilkerson should probably invest in knee pads and elbow patches. He arguably already possesses super powers.
In his 14-year-old son’s eyes, the 43-year-old seller of automotive paint from Rockford, Michigan, becomes Spider-Man whenever he’s after a whitetail that shows no sign of willfully strolling into crossbow range. He’ll drop to the ground in a heartbeat, ready to be a human inchworm if it means he can get closer to the unsuspecting animals.
That’s how he scored the runner-up to a state record last fall.
Already an avid archer, Keith bought his first crossbow about 10 years ago, when his daughter, Kaleigh, turned 7. (She’s 17 now, and his son, Tristan, is 14. Both love hunting.) He says carrying it has changed the way he hunts.
“It’s no longer a waiting game for me, in which I climb a tree or sit in a blind and cross my fingers,” he said. “I now stalk deer. My son loves it. He likes to say it works every time. It doesn’t, of course, but if I see a deer out there and don’t think it’s going to get any closer, then why not go after it?”
He hunts the mostly treeless property of a family friend in Ionia County. The tract consists mostly of cornfields and CRP, since all the ash trees were killed 15 years ago by emerald ash borers. The adjacent lands are timbered, but his ground holds a lot of deer as long as the corn is standing.
Keith and his father decided to raise their deer hunting bar by setting an outside-the-ears rule in 2008, the goal to shoot more 2 1/2-year-old whitetails. Since then, they’ve adjusted upward to manage for 3 1/2-year-olds, then 4 1/2-year-olds.
In 2023, they took note of a 10-pointer with a couple of sticker points that was a borderline shooter. They had some close calls, but no opportunities to make hard decisions. After the gun season, which they do not hunt (because the landowner does), they completely lost track of it and assumed someone else had tagged it.
Not seeing the deer at all in 2024 only reinforced that notion.
Last season (2025) was to be the first time 14-year-old Tristan would sit by himself. Father and son went out after school and work on Monday, October. 27, but the boy forgot to put his own crossbow in the truck. They sat together, backing into the edge of some standing corn and pulling some stalks around them.
A 9-pointer eventually chased a doe out of the corn, but it would not pay any attention to Keith’s grunting or snort-wheezes. Soon after they realized luring it closer was a lost cause, a forkhorn approached to within 15 feet. After a brief staring contest, it spooked, gave its own snort-wheeze and left.
A very big buck had been following junior, however.
“I haven’t had buck fever in years, but when I saw this one, it really hit me,” Keith said. “I was able to stop it by snort-wheezing, but it continued going away from us.”
Desperate, Keith resorted to dragging and banging corn stalks on the ground to simulate a buck scuffle. The tactic worked, at first, causing the big whitetail to change course, but it lost interest again.
“The deer was curious, but it just wouldn’t commit,” Keith said.
Father and son returned the next evening, each with a crossbow. Tristan remarked, “You’re actually going to let me shoot this deer?”
“Yes, son, even though it’s going to ruin you if you do. You might never get another one anything like it, so if you get a shot, just please make it count,” dad replied.
Tristan sat in the corn by himself for the very first time, while Keith crawled across a field toward some CRP. When Keith reached his destination, he saw the giant about 140 yards distant. Rather than play spectator, he decided to crawl another 120 yards toward the corn so he could use the cover to get closer.
As he neared the edge of the sea of stalks, as far as he could go, he saw the 9-pointer they’d watched the previous day. Other bucks were milling around in the CRP as well: an 8-pointer, 6-pointer and one they’d nicknamed “Gimpy”, a 6 1/2-year-old that had survived a shoulder shot.
Keith’s grunting lured three of them closer. The 9-pointer winded him and moved off toward where Tristan was hunting. The 6- and 8-pointers als0 caught his scent. Gimpy just disappeared.
When Keith saw a 4-pointer exit the corn and start pestering a doe, he began looking for its much bigger running buddy. On cue, it stepped into the open.
“I was standing in the corn, one row deep, and ranged the buck at 40 yards,” he said. “That’s when Gimpy pops up and decides to re-enter the corn within 20 feet of where I was standing. I was already pointing my crossbow at a bush, where I’d planned to shoot the big one when it arrived. It was coming.
“I was really worried that Gimpy was going to ruin everything. I can’t believe he stood there for as long as he did, a 6 1/2-year-old deer at only 15 feet. But he didn’t spook, and the big one reached the bush,” he continued. “I got the shot.”
Rather than push the deer, he and Tristan left. His son had seen many of the bucks in front of Keith, and he heard the shot.
He found his buck the next day.
“I can’t believe I shot such a deer in Michigan,” Keith said. “When I found it, I just laid down beside it and stared.”
After news of the harvest spread, Keith learned that other hunters had collected trail camera images of it. He didn’t have any.
The neighbor across the street invited him to bring the deer to the local Red Creek Cooperative banquet, where like-minded landowners and hunters showcase the year’s finest as testaments to their collective deer management efforts.
Ty Hughston scored the 15-pointer for Buckmasters, arriving at 184 2/8-inches. The mainframe 5x5 has four uprights measuring between 10 and 12 2/8-inches. The Ionia County buck is No. 2 among Michigan’s crossbow-felled Semi-irregulars.