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Three Clicks and a Boom

Three Clicks and a Boom

By Mike Handley

The very year Matt Kelly joined a renowned deer hunting club an hour and a half from home, he shot a bruiser whitetail on property that didn’t cost him a dime.

Matt manages his family’s 5,000-plus acres near Carlisle, Arkansas. He hunts those, another piece of ground nearby, and he has a deal with some college buddies to swap duck hunts for deer hunts.

“They duck hunt on our property, and I deer hunt theirs,” he told John Phillips, who’s writing the story for Rack magazine.

His duck hunting buddies also introduced him to a south Arkansas club, which he says is one of the best in the state. When two vacancies opened for the 2017 season, Matt and his father jumped at the chance to join.

In addition to driving down to scout the new lease in September, Mark ran trail cameras on the duck hunters’ 350 acres.  On the last day of the month, he retrieved a photo of a buck he pegged as a 170-incher.

That’s the deer Mark hunted on Oct. 21, the muzzleloader opener. He spent the day inside an elevated box stand, but he didn’t see the buck he’d nicknamed Big Boy.

His hopes were significantly higher when a cold front blew in later in the season. There was no way the rain would keep him indoors while the mercury was falling.

To play it safe, Matt took two blackpowder rifles with him, the backup belonging to his dad. He’d sighted-in the guns at the same time.

He was just about ready to wrap things up that evening when he spotted a small buck exiting the woods about 100 yards distant. Big Boy was next.

“As soon as I saw him, I started shaking,” Matt admitted. “Since my dad’s gun grouped tighter than mine, I braced it against the wall of the shooting house, held it tight to my shoulder, and squeezed the trigger. Three times.

“And the gun clicked. Three times,” he added.

After the third disappointment, Matt traded the gun for his own. He was so intent on making the shot that he leaned in too close to the scope, which nicked his brow.

“I was bleeding, shaking and trying to look through the scope. I was a total wreck,” he said.

Though he somehow managed to reload the rifle, a second shot wasn’t necessary.

Big Boy was not the 170-inch buck Matt thought it was; he was nearly 27 inches bigger!

The rack’s BTR score is 196 7/8 inches.

— Read Recent Blog! This Burger Had Nearly 219 Inches of Gristle: Bobbie Poynter | Muzzleloader | Indiana | BTR Score: 218 6/8

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