For 20 minutes on Oct. 4, Chris Kelly thought about trading his box stand for a ringside seat to a buck fight. He knows warring whitetails can get so wound up that they’d allow a Macy’s Thanksgiving parade to pass.
The continuous, metronomic clashing of antlers told him the bucks weren’t going to stop until one or both collapsed. With a little luck, he might be able to sneak within bow range.
Yes, the 45-year-old finally decided. I’m going to them.
Chris had set up the elevated stand on the 71-acre Schuyler County, Illinois, farm a month earlier. He had to go down 8 feet before he could cross the gap to the action he could only hear.
Before he could do it, the fighting stopped. And soon afterward, he saw one of the presumed warriors, the buck at the top of his Most Wanted list. The deer looked like it had just stepped off a treadmill, mouth open.
He’d passed up the animal five times prior to the 2019 season. He also had its previous year’s sheds. This was the year!
The deer was too far away, but Chris was thrilled to know the big dude was alive and in the area. He returned to the blind the next day with an Ozonics machine and high hopes.
A friend who lives nearby, who didn’t know Chris was hunting, sent him a text. He’d seen the dream buck leaving an alfalfa field, and it was walking toward the new stand’s direction.
He slid open the blind’s left windows right before five does appeared and began feeding.
“Shortly after 7 p.m., a 140-inch 10-pointer came out to feed, 20 yards in front of me,” Chris told Gita Smith, who’s writing the story for Rack magazine. “A couple of does lifted their heads and licked their noses. I also noticed the 10-pointer’s posture changed as it stared to my left.
“Sure enough, my big buck was approaching, and the smaller buck obviously didn’t want to fight.”
The shot was a 38-yarder.
At 188 4/8 inches, the Illinois bruiser is No. 5 among the Land of Lincoln’s crossbow-felled Irregulars.
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