Every year, Chris Robbins schedules his weeklong vacation to coincide with Indiana's whitetail rut. In 2006, instead of bowhunting his usual spot in Jackson County, Chris hunted with friends Mike Palmer and Bill Georges at a military base north of Columbus.

Most years, the base is opened to archers four days a week, Monday through Thursday. By the end of the hunt on Thursday, four days into his vacation, Chris had seen only two deer. On Friday, he returned to similar conditions in Jackson County.

On his way home from the woods Friday night, Chris called his longtime hunting buddy Brad Shepherd. He had been in touch with Brad throughout the week, so Brad knew things had been slow. He wound up inviting his pal to spend the rest of the weekend hunting with him in Switzerland County.

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It had been two years since their last encounter, and, suddenly, only 20 feet separated Greg Holthaus, up a tree in a climbing stand, and the Illinois slammer that had haunted his dreams after back-to-back misses in 2004.

"Here it came, walking right for me, but it was leery and cagey," Greg said. "With the buck coming straight on like that, I never had a chance to draw."

Greg held his bow and quiver in front of his face, hoping the buck would continue walking and pass under his stand, possibly offering a quartering-away shot. The skyline was behind him, and the tree he'd climbed was slightly smaller than the width of his body.

"The deer came directly under my tree, stopped and looked up at me," Greg said. "I was shaking horribly, and it seemed like 10 minutes passed."

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I met Buddy Edlin of Crooked Creek Whitetails 10 years ago on my first paid hunt. Buddy and his family have since been really good friends. And for the past seven or eight years, I have been the breakfast cook and sometimes help guide.
On Nov. 3, 2007, I arrived at camp about 8 p.m.  When I walked through the door, it felt like I'd come home. It's amazing to be able to go around the table and know everyone's name.

For eight years, my place to hunt has been a piece of ground in Schuyler County. It's made up of a mere 12 acres of timber, but it's surrounded by cornfields.

The next morning, a Sunday, I set out around 7:00 to hang my stand in the same tree from which I've taken several good deer over the years. As I walked to it, I noticed a bunch of scrapes and antler-ravaged trees. I was pumped!

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New deer hunters would trade big woods serenity and fresh air for the ambient noise of a nearby highway and a breeze tainted by diesel fumes. But one bowhunter from Fort Wayne, Ind., has learned that aesthetics have little to do with one's chances of taking home a buck.

Wayne Leazier Jr. logs a lot of miles each fall in his quest for whitetails, mostly between home and southern Michigan. Give him a few days, and he's going to watch his odometer spin en route to the deer woods. Give him a few hours, however, and he's going to find a way to hunt much closer to home.

That's what happened back in October 2005. Faced with a drizzly afternoon that didn't involve masonry or construction, Wayne set out for a friend's place in his own Allen County, a 150- to 200-yard wide strip of timber so thick it would've made beagles turn tail and run.

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With the optimism and excitement of everyone who uses a trail camera for scouting, Patrick Cady shuffled through photos. Does, does, whoa! A monster buck was casing his neighborhood!

"Based on what the camera told me, I went out on a Sunday morning, Oct. 3, hung a stand and trimmed shooting lanes," Patrick said. "And then as I was leaving, I met a neighbor who told me about a big deer that was shot on opening day, about 250 yards south of that property.

"It had been raining and cold on opening day, and there was still a lot of standing corn," he continued. "I'd seen a parked truck and thought the guy was wasting his time, but that's who shot the big buck. I went back that afternoon and pulled the stand."

The Wellman, Iowa, bowhunter was understandably disappointed. Time is precious, considering the countless hours he devotes to his own construction business and his duties coaching soccer, baseball and wresting teams. The 42-year-old outdoorsman treasures his time in the woods. And he knew that with the big buck gone, he wouldn't feel the same about the 2004 archery season.

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You'd think that a couple of bowhunters who planned for every conceivable circumstance when packing for a four-day, out-of-state hunt would have pored over maps or at least discussed the lay of the land during the nine-hour drive. Yet for all the planning, all the packing and all the fuss, the itinerary for day one was amazingly -- almost alarmingly -- simple.

When Aaron Burke and Johnny Mitchell arrived in Knox County, Ohio, that first afternoon back in November 2003, Johnny already knew where he wanted to go. The trip had been his idea; the farm belonged to his family. But his instructions to Aaron were far less specific.

"Just walk down that road and find you a place," Johnny told Aaron, who had never hunted deer outside of his native North Carolina.

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"Limpy" first appeared in Don Ehling's Hamilton, Ohio, neighborhood five years ago. The young doe's hind leg had been broken at some point. It had healed, but was essentially useless. Crippled, but by no means barren, Limpy enjoys a protected status among the 18 families who live there.

She feeds in the yards daily, and shows little fear of her human benefactors.

The horseshoe-shaped neighborhood surrounds a deep wooded depression with a creek at its center. Most of the lots are big, between 5 and 6 acres, and branch away from the drainage like spokes on a wheel.

Whenever Don, 70, wants to hunt close to home, he'll take his bow into the hub. He isn't the only hunter who ventures in there, but he has more time than most. Being retired has its advantages.

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My 2005 bow season got off to a very slow start. By Thursday, Nov. 9, two days before Indiana opened the doors to shotgunners, I'd seen nothing of note. Sure, I'd watched a lot of small deer: does, button bucks and about a dozen adolescent bucks. I was even starting to name them.

I had seen some of the same deer so often and so close that I could have jumped out of the tree and landed on them. My favorites were Moe, Larry and Curly. And then there was Abbott and Costello, a pair of 7-pointers who might have been twins.

The deer I was looking for, though, was named Ziggy. That was the nickname my friends and I had used, year after year, for the most dominant buck in the area.

Since Indiana law changed to allow the taking of only one buck per year, I was holding out for a good one, a "Ziggy," so to speak.

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My trip to Illinois last year got off to a rough start.

A couple of weeks before my brother, Derek, and I left, I studied topo maps to get a feel for the property we'd be hunting -- land that our outfitter had leased. When we arrived, our host took us to the tract, and Derek and I spent two hours scouting and hanging stands for the afternoon hunt.

On our way back to the vehicle, we saw another truck barreling down the dirt road toward us. When it came to an abrupt stop, out jumped a little loud-mouthed guy from Pennsylvania, mad as a pit bull because we were on HIS property!
Turns out, he had bought the place the afternoon before we got there. 

Duly and overly chastised, my brother and I went back and retrieved our stands. The outfitter wound up taking us to a place we'd never hunted, although I'd seen a dandy buck chasing a doe in the middle of the road about a half-mile from there the previous year.

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Twenty-eight bowhunters were allowed into the 13,000-acre Yazoo National Wildlife Refuge in early January, having earned the coveted permits by harvesting “cull bucks” during the Sept. 30-Nov. 17 archery season.

To qualify as a cull, by the refuge’s standards, the buck had to be either a 1 1/2-year-old with five or fewer points or (minimum) 2 1/2-year-old with less than eight points.

The reward to those who succeeded was a weeklong jumpstart — a chance to hunt Mississippi’s oldest national wildlife refuge before it was reopened to all comers. From Jan. 2-7, the tail end of the rut in that part of the Delta, the place was theirs. On Jan. 8, the floodgates would open to a sea of bow-toting visitors.

Angus Catchot was among the 28. The contractor from Wiggins, Miss., has prowled the refuge for the past 16 years. Not happy with the 230-mile commute, he even built himself a second home at the nearby fish camp on Lake Washington.

“I’m there every week, 52 weeks a year,” he says. “I scout that place year ’round. Some days, I’ll walk three to four hours in the morning and another three or four in the evening.”

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As I write this story, the trophies from my 2006 safari are still in South Africa — receiving the finishing touches, I hope, from Highveld Taxidermists’ Thomas Ochsenbein or his minions. So it might still be a few months before I can put a tape to my impala’s horns.

Not that it matters a whole lot. If I hadn’t wanted the ram I shot, I wouldn’t have shot it. Mainly I want to know because of an animal I did not shoot.

More precisely, I want to justify why I’ve been kicking myself in the butt nearly every day since I watched an incredible ram saunter out of my life — all because I didn’t want my hosts to think me greedy. I’d already arrowed two impala to that point. One was for chui bait (chui is Swahili for leopard); the other was an old herd ram with blondish horns and great mass.

The one I let pass, however, was much bigger. If someone shoots it this year, his or her name will no doubt earn a spot in the Rowland Ward record book, which recognizes only the length of the longest horn (as opposed to Safari Club International, whose method involves measuring both horn lengths as well as the circumferences at the bases).

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By Mike Handley

Photo: Sixteen-year-old Cameron Bunting of Deville, La., gained a sixth notch in his bowhunting belt last November. He waited six days for the 10-minute window to shut out this 15-pointer's lights.

Ordinarily, anyone who has traveled across four states to climb a tree where bruiser bucks roam would rise with the roosters. But that wasn’t the case when 16-year-old Cameron Bunting crawled out of the sack on Nov. 9, six days into his fall vacation.

Cameron’s enthusiasm for rising before dawn was definitely waning. The hunting party — which included his dad, Greg, cousin Doug Bell and another guy, Reggie Yancy — was one day away from calling it quits and heading the 17 hours back home to Louisiana. Almost everyone else had drawn blood, and the kid, understandably, was ready to write off the 2006 season.

That he had a stomach ache that day was plenty enough reason to hang around camp for a few extra hours.

The trip to Ohio is an annual pilgrimage for the Buntings, who usually are accompanied by two or three others. They go to a cabin in Pike County, near the public ground they’ve come to know very well. As soon as they hit town, there’s always a trip to Wal-Mart for over-the-counter licenses.

Cameron slept in that Thursday morning. His one and only vigil wouldn’t begin until much later in the day, and he was definitely looking forward to a change of scenery, eager to take his dad’s advice and hunt an area five minutes away that always seemed to hold a few does.

Around 4 p.m., the well rested hunter climbed off his ATV and began the 80-yard hike from the gravel road to his stand. It was three hours later than his usual afternoon starting time.

Greg had gone so far as to suggest a particular tree, but Cameron didn’t like it when he got an up-close look at things. He wound up going 80 yards deeper into the open hardwoods, until he stumbled across a fresh scrape.

A buck had left a ripe calling card, and Cameron decided to answer it.

As soon as he was about 35 to 40 feet high in an oak, he flipped his doe-in-a-can twice and grunted. Almost immediately, he heard a deer approaching. Moments later, the kid zeroed in on its antlers.

“I didn’t think it was all THAT big,” he admitted. “I thought that it was just a nice 8-pointer.”

When the “nice” animal was within 40 yards less than five minutes later, Cameron bleated again. When the buck stopped, the kid’s bow hummed.

The deer ran about 50 yards after the thwack, and then its right front leg folded inward, sending it sprawling. Woozy, but still full of adrenaline, the buck managed to rise again and covered another 50 yards before calmly lying down and taking its last breath.

Cameron didn’t realize until he was standing over the fallen whitetail that it was far bigger than the bragging-sized bucks the others had taken during the week. Instead of eight points, it wore 15 (eight on the right side alone).

The 10-minute hunt was almost surreal, especially considering that Cameron had taken only one buck and a few does in the eight seasons leading up to that day.

BTR Score: 162 2/8

–Mike Handley

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Richard Caro might not have received a come-get-me letter from his son, Bradley, postmarked from Camp Granada. But he did get three telephone calls in less than an hour on Dec. 7, 2006.

The first time, Bradley was ready for someone to come get him. He called back a few minutes later to say that he’d changed his mind, or words to that effect. And maybe a half-hour after that, he didn’t know whether he was coming or going.

Bradley isn’t a kid; he’s a 29-year-old equipment salesman. Neither was he suffering through his first day at summer camp, like the young protagonist in the old Allan Sherman song, “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh.” It was indeed the first day of a father-son vacation, but he was savoring it — especially by the time he called his dad for the third time.

Deer Hunting Vacation
The Caros left Biloxi, Miss. (Bradley’s home), on Tuesday, Dec. 5, and drove 12 hours to St. Louis, where they spent the night in a motel. The next morning, they crossed the river for the first time ever into Illinois, bound for Adams County.

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On Friday, Oct. 27, 2006, my husband and I were the coordinators of a "permit-only" archery deer removal at a 1,000-acre regional park in a northern suburb of the Twin Cities Metro area. We had 15 other hunters in the woods, all in stands they'd selected.

I set up my stand around noon that day, getting in and out of the woods as quickly and quietly as I could, leaving as little scent as possible. I returned and was hunting in it by 3:50 p.m., safety harness securely attached. It was a beautiful late fall afternoon, cool, with a light wind blowing steadily out of the southeast.

After waiting for the woods to settle around me, I began flipping my Primos Original Can call.

About a half-hour later, I heard the cattails rattling and looked to my right. Fifty yards away, there was a beautiful, mature 10-point buck slowly making its way toward the higher ground where I was. It took a few steps, raked its antlers in the brush, and then I bleated some more.

No doubt, this guy was a "shooter." The rack had more mass, and the tines were longer than those forming the 131-inch buck I had taken a few years back.

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The third week of October 2006, one of my trail cameras photographed a huge mainframe 10-pointer with matching sticker points off the bases, making it a 6x6. The buck was living on or at least passing through the farm I knew better than any of the places I hunt.

I had tromped around that farm ever since I was old enough to walk.

I discussed strategies with my dad, and we agreed that my best chance of tagging it would be before the rut. If the buck got hooked up with a doe, there was no telling how far it might wander.

I knew I had to hunt this deer smarter than any other I'd hunted. This was going to be tough. I knew if it caught my scent one time, the game was probably over for me.

I decided not to bother this deer until the wind was absolutely perfect. It would take a northwest wind to hunt this particular farm. I tell you, it was hard not visiting this place, knowing what was there. But I knew I couldn't until the time was right. I just hoped the time would come soon.

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