I started bow hunting in 1985 and 22 years later I finally get my first big buck. Being in outside sales and it being the end of the month, I found myself with an opportunity to head up to Ft. McKavett for my last bit of hunting for the year. (My wife is due Dec. 7th with our first child...it's a boy) I figured I could hunt Wednesday evening through Tuesday morning and be able to at least shoot something. So on Wednesday morning, I left around 9:30am from Pearland and arrived at the ranch around 3:30 that afternoon. I unloaded my gear, showered, and headed straight out to my buddy's stand. Now to preface this, my buddy had told me to go hunt his stand when I got there he was seeing a 130 class 8 point that was coming into his feeder like clock work. So off I go to this new location, climb up in his tripod and set up my gear, climb down to test the feeder and to my surprise...IT'S EMPTY!! Ah man...I say to myself. (Because this is "G" rated). I climb back up the stand, get my gear and head off to my stand. As I approach my stand, there are several deer already there. I tried my best to avoid the inevitable, but they "blew" and "flew", but no more than 5 minutes after being in my tripod, I see several younger bucks cruising up, all running together and appear to have no clue of my presence. At this point, I've been there about an hour and decide to take some hand held digitals to kill some time and to show my wife. After a few shots, something told me to put the camera away and I no more had put it in my pocket when I see some movement to my left. It's a buck and he's pawing at a scrape on the ground less than 50 yards away, but at this point I can't tell how big he is. This buck lifts his head and heads straight for me and I can't believe my eyes. This buck was not in any of several thousand trail-cam pics I have had since August and I couldn't believe my eyes. To me, he was "HUGE". Now this guy is 15 yards and approaching fast, he comes into my first shooting lane and I can't even pull my bow...my heart is beating so fast. He comes into the second lane and I collect myself, take a few deep breaths and tell myself to calm down and get excited later...after the shot. By the time he steps into my third and final shooting lane, he is 13 yards and I am at full draw...I give a little grunt and he stops dead in his tracks. I squeezed that release, my Hoyt Vectrix and Muzzy MX-4 did the rest, a perfect heart shot. I gave him about an hour, the longest hour of my life, and proceeded to find my arrow. It confirmed the good shot and after an easy blood trail of about 75 yards...there is my first trophy. The bad part was…I'm on 4,000.0 acres by myself with no one to share this with. So I am sharing it with all you guys. I aged this buck at either 5 ½ or 6 ½ years old and he grossed 140 2/8. He is a main frame eight with a kicker on his left G-4…he has 21 total points with two, short, drop tines pointing towards each eye and lots of trash around the bases. His inside spread is 15 1/2”, he’s 16” tall, 16” deep, 5” at the base and he weighed 142 lbs.
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