Claudie Steen watched the nice 11-point ease into the bottleneck, and drew his bow as the animal approached his stand site. He had seen the deer earlier while trailing another deer he had arrowed, and now everything was falling in place.
At a mere 15 yards, the Canton hunter put his pin on the deer’s vitals and released the arrow. And felt his stomach churn as the animal ducked and quickly disappeared.
That was Jan. 31, 2010.
In the coming months, Steen captured several trail-cam pictures of the Madison County buck and knew the deer’s rack had grown. But he never saw it while hunting.
Until Jan. 14.
The wind was perfect for Steen’s stand overlooking the bottleneck. He settled in that afternoon, and sat to see what would move past the stand.
“That’s my favorite place on the property because generally anything that moves is going to move through there,” he said.
Just after 5 p.m., he watched a doe and button buck crawl under a nearby fence. About 15 minutes later, with daylight failing, another deer stepped out of the thicket and approached the fence.
“I saw it was a nice buck, but I learned a long time ago not to look at the horns,” Steen said.
So he watched the buck out of the corner of his eye, and saw it turn at the fence and ease closer to his stand site.
“I had made a gap in the fence, and instead of going under the fence where the doe and yearling crossed, he came back to the gap,” Steen said. “He came through that gap and went right to a scrape.”
That put the buck 15 yards from Steen, and the hunter eased his bow to full draw, placed the pin and released the arrow.
“I aimed right for his heart, but when I released, his legs fell out from under him and whirled around,” Steen said.
Instead of passing through the deer’s chest, the arrow stuck in the animal’s neck. The buck made a complete loop around Steen stand and headed back the way it came.
“He got hung up in the fence,” Steen said. “I use a lighted nock, and I could see him in the fence, and then he just went down.”
The hunter was soon off the stand and easing up to the buck, still unsure of just how big the animal was.
When his flashlight illuminated the rack, Steen’s knees went weak. It was the same buck he had missed nearly a year earlier.
“I almost wet myself, to be honest,” he laughed.
The deer was still a beautiful main-frame 10-point with a sticker off the left G2, with the points arrayed around main beams stretching 17 3/8 inches wide. What had changed, however, was the sheer mass.
“Last year, he had exactly the same thing, but he wasn’t near as heavy,” Steen said. “You wouldn’t believe what he put on since last year.
“He probably put on a good 20-plus inches, maybe 30 inches.”
Sweeping G2s that topped 12 inches helped push the green score to 164 1/8 inches Pope & Young.
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