A football coach from Sabetha, Kansas, can thank his (then) 10-year-old son for persuading him to toss his usual deer hunting playbook in 2013, which resulted in his career-best whitetail.
Garrett Michael's consultation with his young sons - Preston, Payton and Paxton - occurred the night after he passed up a 150-class buck. He'd been hoping to shoot a much larger buck his trail cameras had documented.
Eager to take his mind off the unscathed 10-pointer, he asked the boys where he should hunt the next day.
"Go back there," Preston told him.
"But you know I don't ever go to the same stand two times in a row," Garrett replied.
Preston looked his father straight in the eye.
"Go back there and trick him," he advised.
And that's what happened, sort of.
About 4:45 the next afternoon, Dec. 7, Garrett was watching a spike and a 4-pointer feeding when both lifted their heads and stared in the same direction. The spike took off, but the forkhorn stood transfixed.
Garrett thought it might be looking at a coyote until he glimpsed another buck with main beams crossing in front of its eyes - the deer he'd been after all season.
"I completely lost control of my body," he told Lisa Price, who wrote the story for Rack magazine. "I knew that buck had to walk only 5 more yards for me to have a shot. I was practically in convulsions, talking to myself, mad at myself and thinking I was going to mess it up."
When the big buck stepped into the open, it was glaring at the yearling. Garrett almost shot it then. He actually shot it after it lunged at the younger deer.
The narrow 27-pointer's BTR composite score is 213 6/8 inches.