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Entries for 'Gray Loon'
Piano Man
By Mike Handley
The rattling bag Geoffrey Henry bought just prior to Louisiana’s Oct. 1, 2017, bow opener was worth every penny. The security guard from Start, Louisiana, picked it up at Simmons’ Sporting Goods in Bastrop, after a couple of buddies in the store’s archery shop suggested the tactic. Geoffrey first became aware of the deer when he r... READ MORE
Sooner or Later
By Mike Handley
Paying fanatical attention to scent control might be the only reason Ben Anderson and his buddy of six years, Levi Tussey, got away with hunting from the same stands for a week and a half. The North Carolina hunters wouldn’t normally put that much pressure on a place or a deer, but they had plenty of incentive in 2017. They were mesmerized by... READ MORE
By Any Other Name
By Mike Handley
Keegan Schmitt shot the wrong deer on Sept. 18. The bowhunter from Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, thought he was about to shoot Sweet Sixteen, a 16-point buck over which he’d been drooling for more than a year. He wound up sticking a 17-pointer, however. Keegan couldn’t see the 17th point in the few trail camera photographs he’d collected... READ MORE
Clearing Up Gray Skies
By Mike Handley
Kraig Street of Rushville, Illinois, was in a funk on opening day of the 2016 shotgun season because his co-builder wasn’t able to join him for the christening of their homemade blind. He and his 14-year-old son, Michael, built the shooting house on wheels and hauled it to a cut cornfield a week earlier. The blind had four thickly insulated w... READ MORE
Midwest, Schmidwest
By Mike Handley
Lenny Gilbert never imagined he’d be a centerfold. Holding a dead buck, that is, in Rack magazine. The 33-year-old New Jersey resident loves to watch hunting shows on television, and he reads numerous magazines devoted to whitetails. So he’s well aware that most truly monstrous deer are shot in the Midwest, not where he lives, and not i... READ MORE
Nocturnal No More
By Mike Handley
Four months after acquiring hunting rights to 6 acres next to a swamp in Licking County, Ohio, Mitchell Flowers got his first trail camera photograph of a buck he was sure would score more than 200 inches. He was already thrilled to have collected images of several whitetails, including a 12-pointer he guessed would tally 175. He forgot all about t... READ MORE
Choosing Eenie over Meenie
By Mike Handley
Pittman Edwards of Cleveland, Mississippi, began his 2016 deer season with his heart set on taking an exceptional whitetail that had no qualms mugging for his trail camera while the sun was shining. He reset his heart on the night of Dec. 12. Pittman was returning to his hunting club’s camphouse after a trip to town when several deer ran out ... READ MORE
Threading the Needle
By Mike Handley
Indiana gained a different top for one of its totem poles during the 2016 season, a new state record among bucks felled by blackpowder. The name to be associated with this handsome whitetail is Tim Barrett, who has access to numerous family farms in Ripley County. He owns 12 acres of former tobacco fields, son Justin owns the 15 acres across the ro... READ MORE
Dreading Water
By Mike Handley
Rich Eldridge might’ve shot a smaller version of the buck he tagged in 2016 three years earlier if deer couldn’t swim. Such is the disadvantage of hunting next to a major waterway. Rich’s ground abuts Indiana’s Wabash River. He first saw the incredible whitetail before the hunting season opened in 2013. The deer was on his s... READ MORE
On the Mend, in the Stand
By Mike Handley
When veteran jockey Jason Lumpkins was thrown off his filly and run over by four or five other horses back in 2011, his doctor warned him to stay away from the race track to give his banged-up body time to heal. That was the easy part. The hard (or impossible) part was not hunting. “Lumpy” ignored his doctor’s admonition. He simpl... READ MORE
Ohio Man Crosses River to Collect Buck and a Half
By Mike Handley
Most bowhunters are all smile after retrieving arrows they’ve launched at deer. In 2016, Erik Heller’s reaction was a furrowed brow. Short of being shot at a steel plate or concrete wall, how can a broadhead be pushed back into the shaft? “I had never seen anything like that. I don’t know if it hit a rib or what happened,&rd... READ MORE
Thanksgiving, Two Days Later
By Mike Handley
Brandon Brewer’s infatuation with the 16-pointer he shot in 2016 took root when he found half its rack a year earlier. It bloomed when he collected photographs of the year-older buck. The monstrous whitetail’s was the first image he saw after checking his trail camera that year. Knowing the deer was still alive and even bigger made the ... READ MORE
Zach Galifianakis Wasn’t in this Movie
By Mike Handley
If you ask Ryan Piper, the best remedy for a hangover is Oreo cookies, a selfie and a gagger of a whitetail. Those three things, along with a buddy who wouldn’t take no for an answer, did the trick for this Ohio hunter on Nov. 5, 2016. Noel Underwood, Ryan’s friend and neighbor, was buried on Nov. 4. Afterward, the man’s friends g... READ MORE
Short Arrows, Long Antlers
By Mike Handley
Three of Michigan’s four crossbow records were toppled during the 2016 season. The new No. 1 Perfect is Trent Smith’s Allegan County 10-pointer. Steven Campbell’s 16-pointer is king of the hill among Semi-irregulars. And an 18-pointer taken by Butch Kulikowski is the state’s new Irregular record. Both Campbell’s and Ku... READ MORE
No Culling Necessary in this Sack of Treats
By Mike Handley
Jeff Berkemeier might have collected the mother of all treats on Halloween 2016, but his 12-year-old neighbor had only a broken heart to unwrap. The boy and his father had been keeping tabs on a tall-racked whitetail the’d nicknamed Skyscraper. The woods-saavy kid knew more about the deer’s habits – where it bedded and fed –... READ MORE