SURPRISE BUCK

LEARNED FROM THE BEST

By James McKeever

I am still in disbelief about all of the events related to my 2020 hunt. The feeling is truly unreal to shoot the largest buck of my life and then be off ered this opportunity to share my story. To start the story, we go back to the start of summer 2020. My brother William had been scouting since late June. When early July rolled around, I had decided that I would want to join him and help. He was super excited that I wanted to join him.

We had set up lots of cameras across numerous properties and had been checking them a couple times a week. We would also spend afternoons and evenings together and glass fi elds to watch how the deer were moving and try to pattern them. William would explain to me why we’d do something a certain way or if I had a question he would always answer and explain why. For example, when we were glassing, we would rotate fi elds. When we would return to the same fi eld, sometimes we would sit at the same spot, and other times we would move to a diff erent spot on the fi eld. One day I decided to ask why, he explained that we were playing the wind, making sure to have the wind in our faces so the scent would not blow towards the deer. He also made sure we would always sit on the edge of the fi eld by bush or tall grass so we would have some form of cover so that the deer would not see us.

William had to do a lot of tinkering with our cameras to keep them going at times since they are old cameras, but they worked. We immediately were getting deer on cameras. At the start we were seeing several young bucks and a good amount of does. However as late July came around, we began to get more mature bucks. My brother picked a spot for himself as there were lots of young up and comers and a couple real nice bucks. There was a tall, heavy and wide four by four that he named “Batman”, and a really wide and tall clean fi ve by fi ve he decided to name “Kaiju”. At my spot we began to get photos of three mature bucks. One was an old fi ve by four, real heavy and wide but short tined, we named him “Spruce”. He was the most frequent buck coming through the area. Another buck we ended up naming “Big Ben” was a narrow and heavy but tall four by four. The least frequent mature buck on my camera was a fi ve by fi ve with some stickers that I named “Shaq’ Raq’ “. I also had a lot of young bucks with good potential on my camera. Since my spot was more of a bushed area it made it hard to glass so we never ended up glassing my spot. My brother would always ask if I would want to but I knew there was no point as it was just too thick, but it was nice to have him ask. My excitement began to climb with every passing day as rifl e season rapidly approached.

The fi rst day of rifl e season was Sunday, November 1st. Since I had school the next day, we could only hunt one day that weekend. In spite of the few hours, we still managed to see six deer that day. The second weekend was a pretty average weekend. Small bucks coming in and harassing does, and spikers scrapping with other spikers. The third weekend was insane, the fi rst morning ten deer came into our stand. It started off with small bucks and does coming in, it was hard to stop from spooking them as my legs were cramped up and my back got sore and it became impossible to resist the urge to wiggle. Later that morning I was watching a spiker and doe when I turned my head to the right bushline and saw, “Big Ben”. His antlers towered over all the shrubs and grass around him, and his neck looked as big as myself, but unfortunately, he saw me move before I saw him. He stood there for about fi fteen seconds as I prayed, he would put his head down, and walk closer. But it isn’t a perfect world like every hunter knows, so he turned and darted off into the bushes, blowing loudly. I heard him crashing through the bushes. We rattled, but he never came back in after spooking earlier that morning, so we went home with no deer harvested. That evening we saw the most deer we have ever seen there in an evening. That weekend I kept passing up 120 inch bucks, hoping I would strike gold with a big buck.

On Saturday, November 21st we went to the stand and got all set up. I began to see deer A spiker started harassing does, and at one point that morning I had the most deer at the stand at one given time there has ever been before, with six deer at our stand at one time.

Then it slowed down and I found myself drifting off, leaning my head against the right side of my treestand. I was half awake, half asleep. I saw out of my tired eyes a lot of antler on a body walk out of the southeast trail out of the corner of my eye. He went behind a patch of young trees and I had enough time to get myself ready to shoot. I peeled off my warm body suit, grabbed my gun, stood and waited. About 45 seconds later the buck came out of the trees! At this point I was shaking like a leaf, so to calm myself down, I convinced myself that I would not shoot and just needed to relax. As I calmed down and became more stable, I got a better look and, although I didn’t think I recognized the buck, he looked pretty nice so I realized I needed to shoot! I lined up my shot, gave the buck a “meh” and let the lead fly as he came to a stop. He jumped and ran about another thirty yards. He stopped behind some willows quartered away from me, so I tried shooting again, but I was shaking so bad that I never hit anywhere near him, but I knew that I had drilled him on the first shot.

“My excitement began to climb with every passing day as rifle season rapidly approached.”

He slowly started falling down, and over he went. I looked up to the sky and yelled, ‘Thank you Jesus!”, multiple times. My Dad got down and saw how bad I was shaking. Every time I stood up my whole body would just vibrate, so he had to help me down. He couldn’t see where it went down, and never got a good look at it either. Because I thought it was a different buck I said ,” Dad, I think he’s a solid 140”. He followed me to where I thought it was and as we turned around the corner he said, “Holy crap, that’s a lot bigger than a 140”. This was when I realized this was a new, even bigger buck than any I had on camera. On his right antler he had a sticker on his base, and on his left he had a sticker on his G2. At the end of both main beams he has cool blading. He was a main frame five by five,

but he looked to be only three years old, with a small body and a young looking face. We brought him back home and we had my brother William score. Without dry time, he rough scored 165 5/8 inches gross.

This season has honestly been surreal, and not just for me. William, his girlfriend, my sister and my mom all got the biggest bucks of their lives. William got his buck “Kaiju” and he was 171 3/8 inches gross. Since we both got big bucks, he said he’d build a pedestal to put the head mounts on. So I was super excited about that, and now he said he’d put in a glass display for the magazine when the issue is released. My brother really taught me a lot this year and I’m really looking forward to next season.