Hunter: Hunter Keys
Points: 8 (4L, 4R)
County: Fulton
Season: 2023-2024
Hunt Story
Since June I had been watching this deer having him on camera daily until he lost his velvet when he switched up his pattern and all but disappeared. He slowed down to only showing up once per week if at all. Opening day I decided to go give it a try and on arrival he was already in there standing at 38yds in the patch of woods about two yards from the property line, facing right towards a piece of property I did not have permission to retrieve. I decided to let him pass hoping that he would come back around later in the evening. After that hunt and several more, I started to feel like he was gone and my chances were done after he didn’t show up for over a week. Sunday, September 17th I decided to go give it a try despite him not having shown up for 7 days. After about 4 hours and 10-15 does and smaller bucks had moved through, I thought it was just going to be another empty sit and that he either had been harvested or had moved on out of his summer pattern onto another property. A small Buck was in front of me at 15 yards, he looked back behind him and took off running like he had seen a ghost. When I looked up on the ridge I saw a big dark chocolate rack that could have only been one deer. I immediately started shaking so bad I almost fell out of the tree. I put my phone in my clip-on phone mount on video in the direction he was heading and just hoped for the best with the filming. He came in and stopped to feed at 14 yards and I released a perfect arrow right through the lungs and top of the heart, the rage trypan and Hoyt rx7 did its job. The Buck ran about 15 yards And stopped not knowing what had just happened, I said to myself “go down, go down, go down” as he was standing about 15 yards from the property line of the small lot I was hunting. He swayed to the left and to the right and crashed in what felt like an eternity, but was only 18 seconds. My biggest Buck to date by a long shot was down and I couldn’t be happier. I immediately FaceTimed my fiancé and 2-year-old son to tell them the news and my son may have been even more excited than me. Sharing my love for deer and deer hunting with my son means the absolute world to me and watching him grow, learn and come to love my passion for deer and duck hunting is an accomplishment that I will never beat. The Buck ended up being much bigger than I had expected scoring almost 150 inches as an 8-point. I’m beyond proud of this buck and hope to get a chance at the Shoot-Out!
