On October 15 I had just recovered my trail camera from the area I had planned to hunt when I saw a large buck on the camera from three days before I removed it. The area was on state land in Allegan County in a wooded oak area. I set a treestand and doctored the half dozen scrapes below the stand with doe urine.
Two days later I returned to my stand before light and began calling with my can call. It was a sunny clear day and about 8:30 I heard a noise behind me when I eased around to look there was a large deer running to the scrapes. I turned around and the buck was about 20 yards quartering away from my treestand. I let the arrow fly and I could see it was a perfect shot. I watch the buck run until I could not see him any more, then I heard him go down. I waited 20 minutes and climbed down from my treestand. A search of the area uncovered my arrow — broken in two. However, there was no blood trail, perplexed I set off in the direction I last saw the big buck. After about 75 yards and there he was a beautiful-huge 10-point.
I have harvested about 60 deer in my 40 years of hunting but this buck had the largest body I have ever seen. I tried dragging him by myself but it was too far to my truck. I left him and went home to get my portable two wheel cart. It was still a job retrieving this monster buck. He bottomed out my scale at 230 pounds. I greened scored the buck at 163 inches.
