Rack Magazine

Patient Kentuckian finally collects the venison and skull plate to go along with the sheds.

Jim Hill of Hebron, Ky., takes shed hunting seriously.

Every nook and cranny in his home seems to hold half a deer rack. There’s also the big box in the basement, which is overflowing with discarded bone.

You would expect a guy like this to have some interesting stories to tell. Well, read on to hear how this Boone County antler fanatic zeroed in on a deer that wound up being among Kentucky’s best Typical bowkills of 2012.

“I started shed hunting about six or seven years ago,” Jim said. “I find most of my sheds in late February and early March. It’s just another way, along with trail cameras, to extend my time in the field. I’ve thought about getting a trained dog to look, but that would take the fun out of it.”

Jim grew up in New Richmond, Ohio, just across the Ohio River. After earning a degree at Hocking College, he joined the Boone County Sheriff’s Department, and he and his wife, Nicole, moved to their current home in Hebron.

Over the next several years, Jim made many friends and acquaintances in Boone County and gained permission to hunt several tracts of private land near his home.

“I started hunting when I was 15,” Jim said. “But I didn’t take my first buck until I was in college. Both my sons, Corbin, 8, and 13-year-old Devin, have already started hunting with me. Corbin likes to hunt with a crossbow, and Devin with a gun. Both have already taken bucks.”

The Hill boys also play baseball (Jim coaches), so most of the family’s free time in the fall is pretty well booked.

“In 2011, I collected some photos of a decent 10-pointer,” Jim said. “By October, it started showing up regularly. I bowhunted it in October, but I just hunted the woods’ edge. I didn’t want to move deeper into the bedding area because I didn’t want to spook it.

“When gun season came in, I quit hunting. I’m strictly a bowhunter anyway. But I kept watch over the area to make sure someone wasn’t slipping in without permission,” he continued.

“Later in December, when I resumed bowhunting, I spotted the deer from the photos. There was no warning. I looked up, and it was coming toward me,” Jim said.

“It stopped, however, when its antlers became entangled in a grape vine.

“That deer was really wrapped up and trying to pull free. Debris was flying everywhere. The buck was actually kicking at one point, trying to get its rack loose. And all that was going on about 25 yards from where I was sitting in a tree,” he added.

“Even so, I never could get off a shot.

“Anyway, after the big whitetail finally got free, it trotted right back the way it had come,” Jim said. “After that, I nicknamed him the Grapevine Ten. In addition to the nice rack, he had a calcium deposit on a front leg that made him easily recognizable.”

Two weeks later, on Jan. 7, the Grapevine Ten passed in front of Jim’s stand at about 30 yards. The bowhunter decided to let the deer keep on trucking.

“It was probably a 150-class buck,” Jim said. “There was only a week left in the season, and I didn’t think anyone else was going to kill it at that point. So I decided to let the deer walk.”

He might not have loosed an arrow, but Jim still wound up with the antlers. He found Grapevine’s sheds in late January.

That summer, Jim decided he was going to devote the 2012 season to taking the year-older Grapevine Ten. He was fairly certain he knew the buck’s stomping grounds: a thick bedding area with a good staging area nearby that bordered a 5-acre field. With the landowner’s blessing, he created a food plot, starting with eight loads of horse manure hauled in via 20-foot mulching trailer. He then planted the whole field in clover.

In June, he got the first good photo of his poster buck.

“I knew it was him,” Jim said. “It was already pushing 150 inches with a couple more months to grow, so I knew it was going to be good.

“Pretty soon, the food plot was getting hit hard. As the bow opener got closer, I started getting the deer on camera — en route to its bedding area — about four days a week. This was the same area where I first saw it in 2011, when it got its rack tangled up,” he added.

In late summer, Jim hung a stand in the heart of the bedding area.

“That was my rut spot,” he said. “I planned on hunting the field edges early, and then moving back toward the bedding area. To get in there without disturbing it, I had to crawl up a dry creek bed to get under low hanging branches. And I needed a northeasterly wind.

“Throughout most of August, I was collecting photographs of this buck four days a week. I had cameras set up on field edges and beside mineral licks,” Jim said. “But by the end of the month, the photos ceased.”

Jim hunted the field edges for most of September and October, but he didn’t see the Grapevine Ten. He was actually worried that something had happened to him.

The wind shifted on Oct. 28.

“That afternoon, I put my hunting clothes in a backpack to keep them fresh, got my Mathews and crawled up the dry creek bed to my rut stand,” Jim said. “I was aloft between 3:00 and 3:30. Fifteen or so minutes later, a couple of does passed through, and then another huge one.

“Almost immediately, I saw a deer with a rack coming up behind her. The buck actually mounted and bred the doe within 25 yards of my tree, and then they came even closer.

“From 18 yards, it was hard to miss the split brow tine and the calcium deposit on the buck’s knee,” he continued. “It was the Grapevine Ten. When the doe stopped to groom, he also halted. When I drew, he was only 10 yards from me.

“The wind was in my face, but the deer was obscured by brush, forcing me to let the bow down. I hated to do that.

“When he stepped into the clear a few seconds later, I drew and put the pin right behind his shoulder. At the arrow’s whack, he mule-kicked, ran 15 yards and stopped, and I could see the hole left by the broadhead,” he said.

Jim watched until the deer was swallowed up by the vegetation at 30 yards. It looked like he was heading for the clover field.

“That’s when my nerves went haywire,” he said. “I couldn’t believe what had happened in such a short time in the stand.”

When things settled, Jim called to share the news with his wife. A half-hour, plus a short 50-yard tracking job later, he was standing over the fifth largest Typical taken in Kentucky in 2012.

Hunter: Jim Hill
BTR Score: 183 3/8
Compound Bow
Perfect

– Photos courtesy Jim Hill

This article was published in the September 2014 edition of Rack Magazine. Subscribe today to have Rack Magazine delivered to your home.

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