I have learned over the years that being a deer hunter, there are times when you get fixated on one particular deer that consumes you and nothing else you see will be the one you want to harvest. When that happens, it can lead to moments of focus, hours of hard work, seconds of frustration as well as a satisfaction that only a dedicated hunter can understand. I have also learned that I can harvest a whitetail buck I’ve never seen until that moment I take the shot and be just as happy in that moment as I can be hunting for one buck that has consumed me. However, I do admit the work in the off season is now almost more fun than touching the antlers on a buck I’ve dreamed about outsmarting.
Confusing yes, but that is a one of the many great things about whitetail hunting. If it’s what makes you happy and fits inside the plan for the location you’re hunting, then it’s perfect. Like I said, confusing to most, but if you deer hunt you know what I mean when the journey is often the best part, as it can take years.
Recently a whitetail buck on one of our Texas leases caught my attention. He first showed up on our scouting cameras a couple of years back. He was dominant in regard to how the other bucks gave him space from the very first time I spotted him on a Stealth Cam. His rack was unique with kickers and trash all over, his attitude was awesome, he was smart as I’d told others about him in case he showed up and they all wanted him. With that being said, I’d never seen the buck in person and neither had anyone else despite us hunting that area of the lease often.
As I began to tell others about him more and more it became obvious, he was outsmarting us. I started to save some Stealth Cam photos of him to share but mostly I started to start to wonder where this buck lived the most so we could get a chance at him.
I knew the area he showed up at the most well. It was this open area near a natural gas pipeline where you could see for miles. But no matter how many times we tried to hunt him there, no matter what we hunted with, he never made an appearance when we were sitting in that area. Was he spotting us going in? Was he spotting us in the blind we had set up there? What was it that we were doing wrong? As the 2022 hunting season came to a close nobody had put a tag on him yet I was still getting random Stealth Cam photos, so I knew he’d made it at least through hunting season without either us or a neighbor shooting him.
As we begin to prepare for the 2023 season, I knew I wanted to target this buck, but I honestly really did not have a plan in mind. Other projects had my attention despite getting a photo of him randomly all summer long. I knew he’s on our list to hunt and to look for but based on the season before I wasn’t confident it would happen. At that same time I also had made up my mind to make a new food plot to the northwest of that area about a ¼ mile away. We’d fenced off an area to keep cows out, moved a Boss Buck Protein Feeder to new plot, moved a large Muddy Penthouse Blind into the area so we could hunt with about anything and it’s Texas so we added a corn feeder as well.
With the area now fenced off to keep the cattle away, we also planted some oats. Now if you follow along on our adventures on this deer lease you know we only get about 12 inches of rain if we’re lucky a year lately. Most of our food plots become dust plots more often than not but I still try, and I know if I’m lucky and it rains those small plots are covered up with deer for the short time they survive.
Luckily, while we were hunting whitetail in Kansas and ironically getting rained out it was also raining in Texas. Upon our return to Texas (and the deer lease) those good soaking rains had created a deer hunting smorgasbord as we now had Oats, Corn, and Record Rack’s Antlers Plus Protein in a free choice Boss Buck feeder and boy were the Stealth Cams showing some promise and the buck we had been hunting last season was now showing up here as well and I knew then I was going to hunt him.
I decided that this whitetail buck would be a great opportunity to field test the new TenPoint TRX 515 crossbow. This new TRX 515 is a completely new design, from the way you load your arrow, to the new twin-riser design, ambidextrous AR-style safety, and not to mention a speed of 515 feet-per-second. I knew this crossbow was worthy of going after a buck like this.
So, we were all set up and just had to wait for the right conditions and a bit of luck to come our way.
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