By Daniel Lovett

January 2, 2017

I wasn't planning to hunt the afternoon of November 13, 2016: it was warm out and there was a problem with the toilet facility at our hunt camp. However, my loving wife, who was already hunting one of her tower blinds, texted me and said the toilet problem will be there tomorrow, but the weather app shows the northeast wind is perfect for your tree stand all afternoon, but not after today, so I decided to head over there, arriving at around 3:15. This tree stand had not been hunted for over a year.

After not seeing anything the first 2.5 hours, a doe popped out of the pines to my left at around 5:45 and I thought, well at least I saw something! Then I heard something else coming and I thought, Oh yeah, and I put my gun up. By this time, with legal shooting light ending shortly after 6, it was difficult to confirm that he was a shooter. I could see that he was a big buck, but couldn't be sure he was definitely a shooter. They both walked back into heavy brush and just before he disappeared I got a glimpse of heavy bladed antler and thought, wow, at least I got to see a shooter buck. About 2 minutes later, the doe popped out again, this time right in front of me at 60 yds, and OH YEAH, she sniffed around and th buck bumped her from behind, stepping out perfectly broadside. In the low light it looked as though a small pine was in front of his vitals, but when I put my gun back up and Looked at hm through my scope it was clear that the pine tree was in front of his neck, so I put the cross hairs on his vitals and squeezed the trigger of my Tikka .270, sending a 130 grain Hornady Superformance SST bullet right through his heart and lungs. He bolted forward, turned and ran to my right. After a few seconds I heard him crash and oh my goodness not only had I just harvested the biggest buck I had ever seen in the woods, but when I walked up to him, I realized he was a buck we had seen on 2 trail cameras since the summer, and one I had really hoped to see on the hoof. The butcher confirmed that he weighed 210 lb., and he was rough scored at 148 inches. The taxidermist removed his jawbone and the buck was aged at 5.5 yrs. We have both been shooting Hornady Superformance SST bullets from all our guns, .243, 25.06, .270 and .300 Win Mag, and they not only group consistently, they have never let us down. Super accurate and deadly!

Three years ago we made a decision to shoot only mature bucks and a few does and let even big antlered young bucks walk. Both my wife and I passed on this buck in 2014 as a nice 8 point with tall brow tines-and am I glad we did!