After lunch on Thanksgiving Day, Aaron Woodard of Gluckstadt headed to his family’s Webster County deer camp near Lodi. The next morning, he killed an 8-point buck that weighed 190 pounds. The deer’s antlers were made up of 8 long points, a long drop tine, and two kickers.
“I was walking in before daylight and got about 100 yards from my stand when a deer jumped up and went crashing through the woods and across the creek,” Woodard said. “I was hunting a white oak bottom that formed a funnel with a pine thicket and cutover to the north. We usually do pretty good there when the acorns are dropping.
“It started getting daylight and I was watching the hardwood bottom funnel when a 4-point came and crossed in front of me about 25 yards. It went out about 100 yards in front of me eating acorns and I watched him 15 to 20 minutes. To my left I saw the body of a bigger deer in the woods, and he fed out towards the other deer. I’d only got a couple of other deer on the camera this year and I’d never seen this one before. He pushed the 4-point around and they were heading back toward that funnel, and they got out there about 25 yards and he gave me a quartering shot without a pass through.”
The search begins
After the deer ran about 65 yards, he stopped for a minute and went into the thicket. Woodard lost him.
“I sat about another 45 minutes and went out there and didn’t find blood or hair, so I went back to camp to wait a couple of hours before going out,” he said. “I walked over to where I’d seen him last and found a spot of blood and walked to the thicket and there he was about 10 yards into the thicket just laying there. I walked up to him and saw the drop tine for the first time.”
Woodard figured the deer must have been moving through due to the cold front because they didn’t have that deer on camera the last couple of years.
Woodard was bow hunting from a lock-on stand when he harvested the trophy buck.
“This is my third buck with a bow and it’s a lot more fun just watching them up close,” he said. “Last year I shot my first buck with a bow and I liked it so much that its about all I’ll hunt with now.”
Woodard harvested the buck with a Mathews bow with a Rage Hyperdermic 2-blade broadhead. Though he was hunting with a bow during open gun season, Woodard was up to the task and enjoyed the challenge. In the process, he harvested a trophy the hard way, with a bow during open gun season. It just doesn’t’ get much sweeter than that!
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