HE WAS THE MOST IMPRESSIVE BUCK we had on the farm that year, maybe any year, and I knew just where he lived. Or, at least, I thought I did. There’s a marshy creek that runs down the west side of the property, and that creekbottom transitions to a 100-yard-wide stretch of hardwoods that border a hayfield. The buck lived in the creekbottom and patrolled the hardwoods for does as they made their way up into the field.
I knew this because my hunting buddy Josh Dahlke and I had the whole area rigged with cellular trail cameras and we’d been monitoring the buck since August. Most of the photos we