It’s not simple to cross on a Booner buck yr after yr, however that’s precisely what Iowa bowhunter Bruce Severson did to tag the most important whitetail of his life final Tuesday. After sending up a prayer (or two), Severson lastly put an arrow by way of the large 24-point buck, which had a inexperienced rating of 207 and 5/8 inches.
Severson tells Outdoor Life that he first observed the buck 4 years in the past on a chunk of personal land that he commonly hunts in southeast Iowa. The deer was already carrying round a minimum of 170 inches of antler on the time, however he appeared so younger that Severson nicknamed him “Baby Boy” straight away. He despatched path digital camera images of the buck to his good friend Don Higgins, who advised him he ought to maintain off for a minimum of a yr or two.
“He goes, ‘Oh Bruce, you gotta let that deer go a couple years. If you can’t stop yourself from shooting him, you shouldn’t even hunt that area,’” says Severson, who took Higgins’ recommendation with out questioning it. The buck would present himself many times over the following two seasons, however Severson refused to hunt him. He wouldn’t let anyone else hunt the property both and it turned a sanctuary of kinds—till final season, when he determined he couldn’t wait any longer.
The buck was approaching the 190-class by that time. After two shut calls along with his bow, Severson nearly bought a shot over the past day of muzzleloader season. In the top, Severson needed to watch Baby Boy battle with one other buck simply out of vary as darkness fell and time ran out.
Like clockwork, Severson says the buck confirmed again up on the property someday in mid- to late-October this yr. He bought a minimum of 200 path cam images of the deer over the following few weeks, however solely at night time. Still, Severson had made up his thoughts that he’d hunt the buck as onerous as he may, and final week on Nov. 8, he walked out to the treestand he’d hung close to a scrape within the hardwoods. While on his option to the stand, he stopped for a second to wish.
“I said a very selfish prayer to God that if he’d give me an opportunity, I sure would appreciate it, and I gave thanks for allowing me to hunt such an animal,” Severson says. “And I no more got done with that prayer and came up over the hill when I saw that deer out in the open about 125 yards from me.”
Read Next: Where to Hunt Deer within the Big Woods
Severson dropped to the bottom, ditched his pack, and crept inside 60 yards of the deer. He tried grunting repeatedly, however the buck wouldn’t chunk and rapidly disappeared. So Severson grabbed his gear, ran over to the patch of hardwoods, and climbed into the treestand. Then he took his rattling horns and rattled as onerous as he probably may. A doe stepped out, and shortly sufficient Baby Boy got here into view about 45 yards away. The doe walked proper by Severson’s stand, however the buck wouldn’t work any nearer.
After 15 to twenty minutes of this, the buck stepped into a gap, and Severson was staring on the buck by way of a taking pictures lane the scale of a basketball. By that time, he was a nervous wreck, so he closed his eyes and prayed once more.
“By the time that deer walked through, I asked God for his grace, and I was so relaxed,” Severson says. “I anchored my pin and prayed let my arrow be true, and I’ve never had an arrow fly as true as it did right then. It buried up to the fletching just behind his front shoulder.”
Severson waited as he heard the buck crash into a close-by fence, after which he referred to as a good friend to assist monitor the deer. They noticed blood with bubbles straight away and located the arrow close to a bloodied fencepost. Looking up on the prime of the bluff on the opposite facet of the fence, they noticed the buck piled up within the grass, roughly 80 yards away from the place he was hit.
“In the last four years I’ve gotten three other Booners under my belt, but this is by far the biggest,” Severson says. “I just gotta give the glory to God on this one. God helped calm my nerves, and when I drew back, I was at peace.”