Hunter: Jenn Lindsey
Points: 10 (5L, 5R)
County: Johnson
Season: 2024-2025
Hunt Story
We spotted this buck on trail cams in the summer of 2022 and immediately noted that he would be nice in a few years and that his brow tines were abnormally respectable. He had good mass and great tine length. We hoped he would hang around and luck up and be able to make it a few more years. My husband came to full draw on him and let him walk when he was in a bachelor group opening week of archery season and he was jumped on the field edge once after. He exploded the following year and transformed into a main frame 9 point with some kickers that pushed him to an 11 point. We had several thousand pictures of him on the property but only 3 during daylight hours. As the season neared to an end we were relieved when we hadn't heard any talk of him being taken. 2024 season rolled around and BAM! he showed back up on camera in June. His distinctive browtines were already apparent. Contrary to the two previous years, we only got a handful of pictures of him as the season neared. He was not nearly as consistent in the food plot and it was evident he was spending a lot more time on neighboring properties than previous years. We hadn't seen him since before archery season when out of nowhere he showed himself on camera the night before Hurricane Irene reeked havoc on the landscape. There he was, out of velvet and majestic in the heart of the property. The hurricane disrupted our hunting as we focused our time on our families, neighbors, and community. We moved some cameras around as the area of the last photos of him were now inundated with water and disrupted with fallen trees, but we wouldn't see him on camera again until late November. A rolling cold front finally came through and ignited interest in the cool season plots on the farm. The buck all of a sudden appeared after a nearly 2 month hiatus in one of the plots. It was like he knew they had been there all along. The Irene rains had germinated the seed, but the plots had struggled up until the past 2 weeks. 2 recent rains had finally allowed the plots to flourish and the deer had found them! He ate for a good while before disappearing, but the next night he showed back up in the plot and ate for half of the night before walking a quarter mile to another plot where we'd never seen him before. He spent the early hours of the morning browsing this plot before moving away into a thick and brushy area of the property. A morning duck hunt was postponed because we knew he was in the area. We simply couldn't risk pushing him away if he was still in the area. The following morning didn't produce any deer sightings at all. It seemed they were still full from pigging out all night. There was a small chance the buck was still on the far corner of the property where he had never been before, because he had not walked back through the plot from the night before. I elected to hunt the ladder stand at thIS plot for the afternoon hunt hoping he had been sleeping all day and would be ready to get back on his feet and fill his belly. It was not frigid but it was cool enough that the mosquitos wings had finally gotten a little freezer burnt and an afternoon sit was finally enjoyable. About 30 minutes before dark a broken off buck came out and began feeding in the plot. After a while he began looking toward the opposite end of the plot I pointed the old faithful 30-30 rifle in the direction he was looking and could not believe it when just seconds later he walked out. It was finally him! In the flesh! On the hoof! The buck that I'd hunted before work for many mornings and had haunted my dreams was right in front of me.I looked through the scope as he peered nervously at the broken racked buck and decided I couldn't wait anymore. I squeezed off the trigger and he fell in his tracks! I didn't believe it was real. Up until now i hadn't killed a buck bigger than a 10-inch wide 8-point but had hunted so hard for years and missed a lot of opportunities. It seemed unreal that it actually worked out. I called my husband and he and my boys rushed from home to be apart of the ending of a legend for the whole community. This deer had bounced around ours and neigboring small parcel and had developed a reputation he was big and he was smart. He had been the cause of a lot of lost sleep and missed events. I am thankful that mine and my family's hard work finally paid off and am forever grateful to have an opportunity like this on a homegrown family farm buck. He has been rough green scored at 159.5 inches.
