This story starts 3 years ago - my parents live on 6 acres next to a decent sized piece of public land in Central Minnesota. My dad always has a camera up in the yard and this buck showed up in 2017 as a 130"ish 10 pointer. Last year in 2018, he showed up as a 160-170" 12 pointer. He only was in our yard once or twice in the middle of the night. At that point, I hadn't quite adopted the Beast philosophies on how mature bucks live and how to track him down. I didn't hunt him real hard, especially after about November 8 when he showed up with one side snapped off just above the brow tine. (That also earned him the name Uncle Cracker courtesy of my Dad and Uncle
)At the end of last season and leading up to this season is when I really seriously started listening to Dan and studying up on the hunting beast philosophies. With renewed ambition I set out to kill a mature buck off of public land. Over the course of the summer, I did a lot of scouting for this buck in particular knowing that he would be a once in a lifetime. Early in the summer I saw a buck that I believed to be him just one time when I was driving around in the evening but he wasn't grown out enough to know for sure... I never saw or heard anything else about this buck until October 7 when a trail camera photo of him started circulating from about 4 miles away on private ground. At this point I'm just jumping around different tracts of public ground and trying to figure out how exactly to apply the beast tactics to my own situation. Being in my last year of college I was hunting every chance I could get, usually 3-5 hunts a week... In the mean time I passed on several little bucks and had a close call on a 130"ish buck that just didn't quite give me a shot.
Fast forward to October 19, he finally showed up by us in the middle of the night. At this point, I knew he was around the area again and it was GO TIME. I went back into the state land on a few hunting/scouting missions. I was pretty impressed with the overall buck sign but hadn't been seeing any deer. On my third attempt (October 27) I had a wind and a cold front that I liked. With all of the information that I gathered, I had pretty much narrowed my search down to one heavily wooded patch that I figured didn't get hunted very hard. I put on my hip boots, took the slough edge, and hiked my way in there that evening. Once I hit the woods I realized why nobody hunts it - it was the thickest jungle of buck thorn and fallen over trees that I'd ever seen. I pushed through that knowing that it had to open up somewhere, and once it did I ran into some awesome and very fresh sign. I followed sign until I came across a rub on about a 6 inch tree and a freshly worked scrape with a big buck track right in the center. Seeing the trails wrap around a flooded area before heading back into the buck thorn jungle, I set up with my scent blowing into the flooded out area. That night I saw more deer than I'd seen in weeks, I had 9 does all come right past my tree within 30 yards. No bucks.
My next opportunity to hunt was the following Friday (November 1st) when I didn't have class... The wind was the same and I had a good feeling about that same tree after seeing the buck sign and the doe presence for this time of year. I packed a lunch and planned to sit all day (hiking through that stuff once a day is enough for me
) I showed up at the parking spot nearly 2 hours before shooting light so I could get in and find my way through the jungle. I ended up getting turned around several times and kind of lost and it took me over an hour before I finally found my way to the tree. I took my heavier clothes off and set my stand in my soaking wet T-shirt literally steaming By time I had that set and pulled my bow up it was only about 10 minutes to shooting light. Right away a doe and 2 fawns came from the south and stopped in the natural alley to browse on some of the green. They just hung out at about 30 yards for about 15 minutes and then finally I could hear footsteps in the leaves to the north. I was watching intently and finally caught one glimpse of a big buck moving through an opening at about 80 yards in between all of the buck thorn - he immediately registered as being a shooter but I couldn't tell how big he was. He followed the trail straight at me and I knew it was gonna happen. He closed the distance to about 20 and stopped right in the edge of the thick. He stood there for 5ish minutes and I still couldn't tell which buck this was. Luckily that gave me plenty of time to calm down and get myself under control. He finally stepped out and that's when I realized it was Uncle Cracker... He was on a trail that angled to me and by my stand at 10 yards so I had to wait until he was right by me to draw. At this point it happened so fast I didn't get a chance to start shaking. I watched his eye until it was past me enough to draw - I pulled my bow back and my heart dropped.... There was zero wind that morning and he must have heard my jacket rustle just a bit when I drew back, he startled just a bit and turned straight away from me walking the other direction. Luckily the does were far enough off that they just stood there looking at him and he had no idea what that was. Also, I had pre-ranged every single tree around me, he got to my 40 mark which was the longest shot that I'd take and he turned to the left giving me a quartering away shot. I made a noise to stop him, settled the pin, and squeezed off the shot. When I shot my lighted nock didn't turn on so I couldn't see my arrow, however I heard it hit and he took off crashing through all of the thick brush. I took that as a good sign but really had no idea what kind of shot I just made. Also, I can't forget the part of the story when the 6 pointer came down the trail 10 minutes later and busted me because I was still shaking like a leaf.
So I gave it some time and texted all of my family. Everybody was pretty much following along with this buck and some of them had history with him as well (pictures from 4 miles away was off of my uncles camera and they had photos the year before as well after he snapped his side off). My dad, 3 of my uncles, my cousin, and my brothers all said that they would sneak out of work so they could come help... I packed my stand out and looked around where he was standing. I found some good blood only about 15 yards from where he stood when I took the shot. At that point I was pretty confident that I made a good shot. I headed back to the house and waited until noon when everybody finally assembled. We went back out there, hit the blood trail, and marched it down 75 yards from where I took the shot and found him laying dead. Turned out to be a quartering away heart shot.There haven't been many times where I've been left speechless but this was one of them. I know how blessed I am to kill a buck like that and having my family there with me made it so much more special... Thanks for reading - and also big shout out to the hunting beast for teaching me so much about hunting mature bucks and giving me the drive to bust my but and refine everything I thought I knew about hunting whitetails. I know this wouldn't have happened if I was hunting with my old techniques!
Also it was pretty cool when we found out that we all guessed his score way low
We had all guessed around 190 +- and he ended up being 214 4/8 gross.... What a dream come true!
what a giant!!! Congratulations...
