After about a year of fitful nights, Ryan Woods is sleeping more easily these days.
The Indiana bowhunter began losing sleep the night after he’d missed a world-class whitetail. His arrow sailed over the deer’s back.
Not surprising (but extremely disappointing), the buck apparently left for another zip code afterward. Ryan would see no trace of the deer until the following year, 2018. In the interim, he was convinced someone else had closed the deal.
He realized he’d worried unnecessarily when the animal began parading in front of the cameras with its new and much-improved rack. The former 160-incher was now pushing 200.
The whitetail abandoned its summertime travel routes soon after the Hoosier State bow season opened. Trail cam photos ceased.
As usual, Ryan feared the worst.
“The farmer’s wife hit a big buck and totaled her car,” he told Greg Hicks, who’s writing the story for Rack magazine. “The deer ran off. I thought it might have been the one I wanted.”
Yet he wasn’t sure.
Ryan passed up some amazing bucks – at least one a solid 160-incher – during big one’s AWOL period. He just couldn’t give up the one and only deer on his wish list, not without proof it was no longer among the living.
Proof came on Oct. 17, shortly after he spotted a running doe while sitting in the same stand from which he’d missed the giant a year earlier. Had he not seen movement behind her, he might have filled his doe tag that day.
Ryan knew he was looking at an above-average whitetail, but he wasn’t sure it was THE buck until after he waylaid it. The shot was 35 yards.
“When I walked up on that deer, it blew my mind,” he said. “I knew it was big from the trail cam photos, but it looked even bigger in person.”
With a BTR score of 196 5/8 inches, the 15-pointer is No. 8 among Indiana Semi-irregulars felled by compound bow.
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