Gary Christensen with a
MONSTER Whitetail buck from Manitoba Canada, The following is the
story of the hunt. During the first day of my hunt it was
snowing, cold and the windiest day I have ever hunted. I was bundled
up so it was hard to hear or see with the wind and snow blowing. At
about 8:30 AM I thought I heard a buck grunting. I took off my hood
and looked around but I didn’t hear or see anything else. Around
11:30 AM I saw a doe that appeared to be in heat as she was walking
around and twitching her tail. Being in the stand all day my walk
back to the truck was hard and I was cold, right to the core.
The second day of the hunt I hunted the same stand as the day before.
This time the wind had died down enough to rattle. I took out my
guides rattling horns and rattled. The only thing I rattled in was a
coyote. About 8:30 AM I heard a buck grunt, just like the day before.
I took off my hood and looked around, especially behind me thinking
that if I couldn’t see the deer yesterday when it grunted that he
must be behind my stand. I didn’t see anything behind me so I turned
around and standing in front of me there was the biggest deer I had
ever seen. The buck was 90 yards away directly facing me. There was a
light wind blowing in my face so I knew the deer wouldn’t catch my
scent. The buck was smelling the ground and checking the wind. Every
time the buck would move I was trying to get my gun in position to
shoot. Once I got the crosshairs on the buck I had a real good
feeling. The wind died down and I felt very steady, but panic hit me
when I couldn’t get the hammer back on my muzzleloader. My gloves
were too thick to fit between the bottom of my scope and the top of
my hammer. I was also having a hard time putting my trigger finger in
the trigger guard. The buck was looking my way so I had to move very
slowly. I pulled my glove off, cocked the hammer and centered the
crosshair on his chest and shot. Through the smoke I could see the
buck jumping back into the wood from where he came. I reloaded my
muzzleloader, waited 20 minutes and then climbed out of the tree
stand. I walked over to where the buck was standing and there was
hair lying all over the ground. I walked into the woods to where he
had ran and the buck was dead 25 yards from where I had shot him. The
buck’s body was so big it was hard to pull him out of the woods. The
buck’s rack is a big 12-point rack (7 by 5) with huge brow tines. He
green scored 167 gross. The buck field dressed at 305 pounds. I used
a Thompson Center Encore 209-Magnum 50 caliber with a Nikon Monarch
scope. |
