Corwin Myers spent a lot of time shivering in a Hunterdon County, New Jersey, deer stand during the first week of January 2018. Trail camera photographs of numerous bucks hardened his resolve and kept his internal furnace stoked.
The local whitetails seemed less inclined to walk around in the cold and snow, however, and Corwin’s enthusiasm eventually waned. By Jan. 9, he was ready to throw in the towel and shoot a doe.
The evening hunt began well.
“As soon as I got there, before I could even pull up my muzzleloader, I looked to my left and saw three or four does in the field next to me, between 80 and 100 yards away,” he said.
Those deer were followed by many more, and some came as close as 50 yards.
As shooting light began to fade, Corwin made up his mind to shoot a nanny, that he wasn’t going to see one of the bucks he wanted.
“I had my gun up and a doe in my sights when something told me to look around one last time,” he said. “When I glanced to my right, my eyes locked on a set of antlers. Even from 200 yards, naked eyes could see how big they were.”
He had no photos of this buck.
A couple of minutes later, the deer had halved the distance. Ninety-two yards was close enough, Corwin decided.
When he squeezed the trigger, however, nothing happened.
“The slide had caught on the tree bark and didn’t have enough force to hit the primer and ignite the gunpowder,” he said.
The animal disappeared from view after the heartbreaking sound of silence, but it came back. Corwin took advantage of his second chance.
He thought he’d missed, at first, because the buck ran away looking none the worse for wear. It wasn’t until Corwin saw snow spewing into the air – the deer going to ground, 80 yards away – that he knew his bullet had connected.
The early 2018 buck is the runner-up to the state-record Typical in the BTR’s blackpowder category. It tallies 169 3/8 inches by our yardstick.
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