Full Moon Luck

[WilM88]

After 8 years of only killing a handful of cull/management bucks and passing up more "decent" bucks than I care to count, I finally connected on big one last Wednesday. I've had this deer on camera 2 years in a row but no one ever saw him last year. Nicknamed him the sticker buck this year bc of the kicker off his left G2. This year, I had no pictures of him up until I saw had him at 60 yards in a food plot 3 days before rifle season opened which led me to put a camera out in that area... and, well I got tons and tons of pictures of him so I began hunting the area hard trying to kill him with my bow but just couldn't close the deal. So with the burning desire and nothing but him on my mind I decided I'd take my rifle into the area where I had last seen him and hopefully catch him slipping through the brush or even witness him eat some green grass. So last Wednesday after scouting for ducks/water I decided to make the 4-wheeler ride into our camp (due to a wet road) and hunt the stand where I had previously seen him. The wind was perfect and the weather was cool, upon a last minute text message to my dad which said "Big Oak or Amen" he replied "Big Oak, kill sticker buck" so that's where I ended up. After arriving in the stand at about 2:45 I sat there contemplating every scenario possible on how this deer moved, how I could put a bow stand in the area to bow hunt him and how I hoped these deer would move before dark, assuming their usual Full moon patterns. As I sat and scanned a empty green field I went back and forth in my head on how I was going out-smart this old, sick looking buck. It wasn't 20 minutes later when I looked to my right and saw ole long nose doe easing her way into the field to fill up on rape, oats, wheat and clover. As I watched her, I noticed a flash in the thicket in front of me as a buck made his way through the brush, to the edge of the food plot. As i eased my bino's up I realized that it wasn’t' "him" and it was 7 point with really short brow tines. I let him get settled in and kept my eye and ear's peeled. At that time the field started filling up with more doe's and yearlings to my east, where the first doe was originally feeding. As these doe's and yearlings started to get settled in, I could hear something thrashing directly to the north east of me and all the deer immediately went on guard looking in the direction of all that commotion. I got my binoculars’ up and saw nothing but a rack thrashing all around in the bottom of a young oak tree and immediately my heart sank and the adrenalin started pumping, my breathing was getting short and my palms were getting sweaty. After 15 seconds of examining him through my bino's and noticing a 4-5 inch sticker of his left G2, I didn't need to examine him anymore. I eased my gun up while keeping an eye on the other deer in the field and waited as he slowly inched his way to the edge of the field about 60 yards opposite of the first time I had witnessed him. As he stood postured on the edge of the thicket and green grass I began talking to myself "Keep calm, Wil, let him come out and get comfortable and make a good shot"... over and over I began to try to slow my heart beat and keep that uncontrollable, amazing, nervous feeling at bay but as he stepped out in the food plot and the more I knew that "this was IT" It just got worse. He walked out into the field, nudged up a doe and began mowing on green grass. I got settled in and made sure I was steady as I could possibly get and took numerous deep breath's about that time the 7 point started chasing that doe right in front of me, grunting and carrying on, at that time i knew that it was time to squeeze one off and end this fairytale. So I looked down at the ground, said to myself "you got this" and looked up, put it right on his shoulder and squeezed the trigger, immediately he fell... flinched, kicked a couple of times and took his last gasp of Big Black River air... Alas, the Sticker Buck was mine.

We roughed scored him at 156 1/4. He is getting aged and scored by a biologist today.

[davidees]

Very, very nice

[jtdumallard]

Great Buck Will. How much did he weigh? We have seen a huge increase in our deer weights in the last 1.5 years on the big black. We have killed 5 bucks between us and our neighbor and they all are over 220lbs.

[WilM88]

The crazy thing is he only weight 150lbs, 5-7 years old. He was very sick, poor looking noticably more than last year. I think was on the major downhill or had blue tongue or some disease at one time. didn't effect his rack any which was obvious.

[mfalkner]

Saweeeet

[mshunter77]

Great deer congrats.

[vicksburg]

NICE! Congrats on a fine one!

[cwink]

AWESOME. Great buck and story..

[KWAKHED]

Nice buck! Congrats!

[ShotgunSP]

Great story! Congrats!

[jdbuckshot]

That is an impressive deer.

the brow tines are awsome!

[champcaller]

helluva deer bud!

[WilM88]

Chad Dacus his scored him at 150 and some change and said he is 4 1/2 years old. Surprised may. As poor as this deer was I dont know if he would have made it another year. Doesn't matter bc he is going on my wall.

[DUCKAHOLIC]

awesome

[bigoak]

Chad Dacus his scored him at 150 and some change and said he is 4 1/2 years old. Surprised may. As poor as this deer was I dont know if he would have made it another year. Doesn't matter bc he is going on my wall.

Did you find anything wrong with him when you dressed him?