Steven Davis learned a couple of valuable lessons last season.
For starters, an arrow might follow your trained gaze to the target, but that doesn’t mean it’ll hit where you were aiming. Also, even the most exhaustively thorough search of a cutover will not necessarily yield the dead deer inside.
Dogged persistence, however, finally put man and whitetail in the same waypoint.
Steven has seen three iterations of the antlers now hanging on his wall.
In 2022, when the buck was an estimated 3 years old with a 135-inch rack, it broke off its left main beam, which gained it a free pass not only on Steven’s Hickman County farm, but also from the neighbors. The following year’s antlers were considerably larger, easily in the mid-170s.
“I hunted it hard in 2023, and I got tons of pictures of the clean 10-pointer,” the 50-year-old farmer said. “It came to my decoy in November, but it changed its mind, turned around, and walked off before I could close the deal.”
Steven’s son got a crack at the buck during the season’s extremely cold final weekend, but he missed. He’d been watching a bean field — as was his father elsewhere.
Dad had his own opportunity on the very last day. However, while he drew his bow three times, he opted not to take the marginal shots.
Steven didn’t hunt as much in 2024. Because the farm was included in one of the state’s Chronic Wasting Disease zones, baiting was prohibited. As could be expected, he collected no trail camera images of the target buck, which used to love munching and mugging, until Oct. 4.
After the ice was broken, Steven amassed about 25 photos of the now much bigger deer. It was no longer a clean 5x5, having added two drop tines and matching flyers.
The only two daytime images came off the same camera, one of maybe 50 surveilling the tract. They were taken near a 30-acre clearcut, which indicated where the giant whitetail might be chewing its cud after a night of filling its belly.
“We put out so many cameras just to find one deer to shoot, and then we move them to concentrate on that animal,” he explained.
Last year’s first real cold snap arrived Nov. 1, during a new moon. Not only was the wind perfect for Steven’s new setup, but the buck also had passed through there around 2 a.m. If ever there was a day to ride his bike the half-mile and spend every waking hour in a deer stand, that was it!
The setup, a 20-foot ladder, had been erected only a few days earlier. Steven’s nephew helped him move it, and they’d cut minimal shooting lanes before leaving. The decision was based on the two daytime photos.
Steven saw several small bucks during his maiden sit that morning, but when the activity ceased, he got down and crawled over to remove a couple of saplings blocking his shooting lanes.
“The cutover is only 3 years old, but the briars and bushes are 10 feet high in some parts,” he said. “That’s why deer like to bed in there.
“The stand is actually on a ridge overlooking the bowl. I can see pretty good when I’m in the tree,” he added.
About 4 p.m., four does exited the cutover, followed by a nice 8-pointer. When they were within 70 yards, the 4x4 grew uneasy. Moments later, the reason became apparent as the bull of the woods rose from the briars between it and Steven. When the dominant buck grunted, the lesser one fled.
Hoping to convince the older buck not to give chase, Steven grunted twice, and the tactic worked, that time. When he’d tried grunting at the deer the previous season, it wanted no part of the conversation.
“It turned him inside out,” Steven laughed.
The stoked buck didn’t wheel around and charge in, however. It nonchalantly turned and rubbed 10 trees during its slow 20-minute approach.
“It took its sweet time,” Steven said. “At one point, the does it was shadowing were right under my tree.”
When the buck was at 25 yards, Steven took the shot. After the thwack, the animal ran 50 yards before falling, breaking off the arrow along the way.
Steven immediately texted his son before going home.
When the two returned later to pick up the trail, they jumped the buck from what might have otherwise been its last blood-filled bed. They should’ve stopped there, but they pressed onward with flashlights until they jumped it a second time.
Even after a drone search and many hours of combing the clearcut, it took an entire month — to Dec. 5 — to locate the buck.
“It doesn’t make for a pretty ending,” Steven said. “That’s what stinks about this whole story. It had traveled only 200 yards total and died in the cutover, where I’d searched — piece by piece — almost every day.
“When I shot, the deer turned a bit, and my 31-inch arrow went through its shoulder. At the time, I said ‘Perfect,’ and when the buck fell over, I said, ‘He’s done.’
“Boy, was I wrong,” he added. “We should’ve backed out after jumping the deer the first time, instead of going after it.”
Randall Mathis scored the 15-pointer for Buckmasters, arriving at an even 203 inches, helped largely by tine and beam length. Four of the uprights are close to a foot long, and the beams measure more than 27 inches. The rack falls into the record book’s Semi-Irregular classification.
