Petersen's Hunting

Holloween afternoon, 2011 - I rushed to my local urban tree stand a little after 4:00PM.  Before climbing into position, I pulled the card from the Moultre trail camera to see what might be working the area and guage my chances for the evening hunt.  I had missed the buck we called "The Freak" about ten days earlier from the same stand and was hoping he was still hanging around.  The Freak is a monster main frame 8 pointer with a double main beam on on his left side.  His spread is at least 18" and he carries a massive body through the woods.  On the fateful night of the missed opportunity, the Freak came in behind me and stood broad side at 20 yards.  I had to turn around and try to shoot through a small opening in the makeshift back screening I had installed behind my stand.  I took the shot before the monster moved into my wind and I blew it.  I missed him clean shooting right in front of his chest.  My two boys have given me grief about it ever since and The Freak has never been seen again.  Anyway, back to the Holloween Hunt. 

Once I was situated in my stand, I put the camera card into the digital camera I always carry into the woods and began scrolling through the pictures it contained.  I was halfway through when several shots of Bubba were screened.  I had gotten a single picture of this deer the previous year in the same general location but had never seen him.  Until this Holloween, I had never seen another camera shot of him.  It looked like Bubba had been hanging around for a few days, but mostly coming into the camera's lense at night.  Before I had too much time to admire what I was hoping to get a look at that evening, I heard some movement and looked up to see three does walking through the woods about thirty yards from my stand.  I let them work through the area and hoped that a deer with antlers might be following close by.  About fifteen minutes later I heard footsteps through the brush along the river about 80 yards away heading the same direction the does had travelled.  As the movement passed further away I decided to give a few grunts on my primos Buck Roar to see if I could draw whatever it was into view.  Before I even put the grunt tube down I caught movement to my left and looked to see Bubba working a trail straight at me.  I didn't have time to think, when his path brought a tree between us that blocked our views of each other I stood and drew my Mathews Switchback bow in one quick motion.  I thought about making a grunt noise to stop Bubba but figured it would probably screw up the opportunity more than anything.  The monster buck was now less than ten yards away walking from my left to my right.  I put my twenty yard pin on his chest and let the arrow fly.  I hit him, but not where I thought I was aiming.  The shot was deadly, but not well placed.  Bubba ran about forty yards, stood still for a couple of minutes and then fell over backwards.  All that I could see through the brush was the tip of one antler and from how far above the ground it was, I knew he was huge, but I didn't have a clue as to how big he really was.  I sat and watched the still antlers for about fifteen minutes and since I saw no movement I figured it was time to get out of the stand and go take a look.  Oh, what a buck and man did I start shaking. 

It took me a solid hour to drag Bubba to my truck.  I had texted a local hunting buddy to come give me a hand loading him up because there was no way I could have managed by myself.  My buddy's reaction when he saw the deer I had just killed was one of disbelief.  No way could a deer this big be taken 200 yards from downtown main street.  We loaded Bubba up and took him home.  The preliminary unoffical Pope & Young gross score done by the Gander Mountain Archery pro was 145 inches with only 2 inches of deductions.  Bubba will be offically scored in a couple weeks at the Dixie Deer Classic and ranked against the other North Carolina bow kills from last fall.

I have been fortunate to be able to hunt for most of my life and have had many great experiences in the woods.  Bubba is the biggest buck I have ever seen while hunting and might be the biggest one I ever get a chance on.

-- Jeff Guernier