When Glenda Holmes climbed into a 20-foot-high tripod before dawn on Dec. 13, 2013, she had on so many clothes that she could barely lift her arms and legs high enough to scale the rungs.
A friend had given the woman from Manhattan, Kansas, permission to hunt from the deer stand in Riley County, and Glenda wasn't going to let the opportunity slide because of the cold. She wanted only venison, and the state's short rifle season was coming to a close.
Fortunately for the second-year hunter, her stint as a human water tank was short.
"I still froze my butt off for a couple of hours," Glenda smiled.
Her interest in deer hunting was born of her love of venison, which she prefers over beef. Her goal was to fill her little chest freezer with meat, whether from a buck or a doe.
Two and a half hours after she climbed into the stand, she had her choice of either. She chose the buck, mainly because it was the biggest bodied deer she saw.
The buck appeared at 7:30, along with four does and two smaller males, 220 yards from the tripod. The leader of the pack was crossing an open wheat field, broadside, and it never occurred to Glenda that the distance might be a challenge for even a veteran hunter.
She simply put the crosshairs on the big whitetail and squeezed her .30-06's trigger.
"I shot, and it dropped like a rock," she said. "It was pretty cool."
I met Glenda at the (January) 2015 Monster Buck Classic in Topeka, Kansas. Her first deer was declared the overall, non-typical winner of the show's women's division.
It's BTR composite score is 205 1/8 inches.