As soon as Alex McCabe of Cresco, Iowa, began collecting trail camera images of a large buck with a lopsided rack in 2014, he became obsessed with it.
He noted wind direction, temperature and barometric pressure every day on his calendar. Whenever he checked the cameras on that farm, he recorded times.
By October, Alex was convinced he just needed a cold snap and a few hours away from work to tag "Loppy." So he kept an eye on the forecast.
When a cold front blew in on Halloween morning, he'd already arranged to have the day free.
"The wind was not right for me to go where I originally intended, so I wound up going to another treestand about 200 yards from Loppy's normal route to his bed," Alex said. "And because I wasn't babysitting his usual trail, I decided to rattle at first light."
The tactic worked.
Alex grunted and even tried a snort-wheeze to seal the deal, but those vocalizations fell on deaf ears. After the deer disappeared, Alex tried rattling again.
Two minutes later, a fully alert Loppy was standing stock-still at 30 yards, obscured by a bunch of tree branches, but then he came 10 yards closer.
"When I saw him fall, I lost it. Everybody in the county probably heard me shouting," Alex said.
This fabulous Iowa buck, obviously a fighter, had sheared off an estimated 20 inches of antler between walking in front of Alex's trail cameras and the day he walked into a broadhead. Even so, his BTR composite score is 182 1/8 inches.