The property Nate Boeckman hunts in Kansas holds more cattle than deer, and there's one less whitetail following the 2021 season.
His friend's 174 acres is mostly pasture, but a timbered draw serves as a major travel corridor for deer that are more comfortable in the shadows. With the landowner's blessing, Nate fenced off the draw to keep cows out of it.
The 42-year-old law enforcement officer and veteran bowhunter uses cellular trail cameras to keep abreast of the deer activity in those woods, and he got the surprise of his life in October. He had no idea the area held a world-class buck until he collected daytime images of it three days in a row.
Nate headed afield on the morning of Oct. 22 with a spring in his step. His destination was a treestand overlooking a 40-yard-wide bench atop a bluff. A major deer trail ran north-south along the crest.
At 8:15, an hour ahead of schedule, he saw the big deer approaching, along with a smaller one.
"The deer were completely at ease," he told Terry Rethman, who's writing the story for Rack magazine. "I have a bow-mounted camera, and I had time to turn it on and get ready."
Because the bucks were in no hurry and completely at ease, Nate filmed them for a good while, waiting far longer than most hunters would before drawing his bow. When he finally did, the smaller of the pair saw him, and the big one saw its companion stiffen.
Before either could flee, however, the arrow was on its way — 22 yards in a split-second. The giant whitetail flinched when pierced, but it didn't run; it simply walked away and collapsed near the edge of the bluff. As Nate approached it later, arrow nocked, it dove over the edge in a last burst of energy.
"It happened so fast that I didn't have time to draw, and I was ready!" he said.
The 13-pointer was dead before it reached the bottom of the drop.
With a Buckmasters score of 190 2/8 inches, Nate's mainframe 5x6 (with matching P-2 forks) is the third-largest, bow-felled Typical ever to come out of Pottawatomie County, Kansas.
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