Brady Jacques has spent most of his short bowhunting career in pursuit of the same whitetail.
The 20-year-old Kansan will finally be looking for another one when the 2017 season opens.
In 2013, the year after Brady began shooting a bow, he retrieved trail camera photographs of a 5x5 with tall brow tines. He says the buck was not incredible, by any means, but it showed potential.
"At the very least, it was worth keeping an eye on," he said.
He assumed the deer survived the rifle season when he picked up a shed antler while scouring the quarter-section the following spring.
Not surprising, the buck packed on more inches in 2014. But it was obviously still a young deer.
The next year, however, the rack improved to a 6x6 with split P2s and a sticker off the right brow tine. If opportunity had knocked before the buck broke off a brow tine and one of its main beams, Brady would've gladly shot it.
A neighbor found the unbroken side the next spring.
In 2016, the buck added even more antler. Its rack was a mainframe 7x7, and there were several irregular points. Afraid the giant whitetail might wander off the small tract, Brady didn't want to put too much pressure on it.
Even so, he wanted to hunt the Sunflower Buck as early as possible, which meant the state's early muzzleloader season.
He called it the Sunflower Buck because the plants had sprung up all over the property during the very wet summer. They were between 6 and 8 feet tall, enough to hinder him from keeping visual tabs on the place from afar.
Brady hunted from his 15-foot-high, hang-on stand six times during the blackpowder season, which opened Sept. 12, and he never saw the deer. Nor was it passing in front of his trail cam's lens.
It disappeared for a 10-day stretch, which worried Brady. He was afraid someone else might've smoked it.
Brady stopped hunting with his muzzleloader after a half-dozen sits because the weather was uncomfortably warm – in the 80s every day – and he couldn't stand the bugs. A creek ran behind his stand, and the mosquitoes were plentiful.
His first bowhunt was on the afternoon of Oct. 4. The wind was perfect, and the temperature had dropped into the 60s.
Brady took off work early that day, hoping to have time to shoot a few arrows before heading to his stand. He forgot his release, however, and had to borrow one of a different style from his uncle.
About an hour before dark, a 160-inch 6x6 came within 15 yards of Brady's stand and tempted the young hunter for 10 minutes. A half-hour after the deer left, he sent a text message to his uncle, proclaiming the day a bust.
As soon as he put down his phone, he looked up and spotted a couple of deer a mere 35 yards away, walking through the sunflowers. When he glassed the larger one, he saw a wall of antler tines and knew it had to be the buck at the top of his wish list.
"I looked at my phone, and there was five minutes of legal shooting light left," he said. "Even so, it was very dark."
Not too dark, however. Brady took the quartering shot when the buck was at 18 yards.
— Read Recent Blog!
Sweet Spot: Drew Miller never dreamed he would shoot something like this in his own back yard.