Brother Bill’s 15 Point Buck

Actually, it was my brother Bill that shot the deer.

We both like to hunt the northern Missouri counties that are known for producing the larger bodied, bigger racked deer. The farm we hunted was in one of those counties.

We had previously killed 2 other 150" class deer on this farm so we knew there were some big bucks using the property, previously at least.

I like to do some scouting but I am not as aggressive as other people might be. We scouted lightly and put in two deer stands on opposite corners of the property two weeks before opening day.

When opening day did arrive it was miserable. Not fit for two older, not as dedicated deer hunters to be in, so we stayed in the sleeping bags until later. Then we went into town to get some hot breakfast and plan our next steps. Both of us agreeing that with the wind and rain, hunting from stands in the only cover on the farm would not be a good idea.

We opted for backing off a bit and setting up on the terraces overlooking the ditch timber and waterways.

Saturday afternoon the rain stopped and we decided to try our new strategy, with Bill setting up overlooking the timbered waterway his stand was in, and me overlooking the ditch timber my stand was in.

We both saw some deer activity that night with equal portions of bucks to does which was encouraging. I saw one of the largest live deer I have ever seen that night. He came out of the cover and walked almost directly under my stand, but he was moving too quickly and jumped the fence heading off the property before I could get a shot.

The next morning was much nicer but we arrived late, (old guy's don't move that quick in the morning). The wind was favorable, so I decided to hunt my stand with the hopes of that Mega Buck coming back to his bedding area.

Still hunting the edge carefully so as to not make a lot of commotion, I had a very nice, (shooter quality 9 pointer) suspect something was up and came out of the ditch cover 75 yards in front of me. He stood there for 35 minutes. I just sat down in the soybean field and didn't move until he was relaxed and went back to bed down. I then very carefully moved past him, setting up in my stand to wait for my Mega Buck. Unfortunately, he never came back, but if I had shot that 9 pointer, I knew he would have.

Anyway, getting back to my brothers deer... Monday morning was progressively nicer then Sunday, but the wind shifted again so we both decided to hunt the terraces overlooking the cover. Bill's spot allowed him a good view of the small ditches and the waterway that they dumped into. By 8:30 we had seen a few deer, does and smaller bucks. When Bill looked up the ditch that ran back to the road, he noticed a larger deer across the road heading towards our property. By 9:15 he had worked his way through the corn field, down the hill along the ditch that dumps into the waterway and he was about 350 yards away going down the hill. It was then that Bill glassed the deer and identified it as a nice shooter. He waited until the buck walked through a gap in the timber so he could get a nice shot. This was about a 250 yard shot which was well within range of his Remington 700 with the Leopold 2x7x40mm in a 270 caliber 130 grain boat tail federal premium bullet. The buck dropped on his feet and did not move. Bill waited 30 minutes or so and made the walk to his deer. It was then that he noticed how good the deer was! With his 10 point typical rack and 6 stickers with 5 measuring over 1" and had been sparring, as one of his G3's was very recently broke. The rack roughly scored at 153" before deductions. Not as big as two others shot on this farm, but still very respectable.

We take allot of pride in being able to harvest nice deer on larger, actively farmed farms with limited cover. I actually prefer hunting deer over large woodlot farms as it's too easy to spook deer you never see and you don't necessarily have to hunt out of a tree to be successful.