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Tulip Sniffer Buck

mplane72

PMA Member
I unexpectedly filled my statewide tag on the 4th. It was my first day of vacation and I had planned on heading down south for the week on Monday. It looked like a long week of side jobs, honey does and raking leaves but fortunately I had a city buck tag to fall back on. I usually don't spend a lot of peak rut time in town preferring to hunt that tag as time allows during the shotgun seasons and on.

After a few days of hunting and not seeing much of interest I decided to grab my climber and go into an area I usually leave alone last Thursday morning. I had not been into that area for several years but I thought there were a couple trees I could make the climber work in.

Of course there wasn't the right tree where felt I needed to be but I found one that would get my feet about 9 feet up and have me in a bunch of branches on a hillside above the deer. It was harder getting into the tree then I expected and i had to remove the top section and bear hug the tree to get close to where I wanted to be. I was sweaty and pissed so I just strapped the top section to a branch and pulled my bow up. After knocking an arrow and hanging my bow I set to getting the top section out of my way above and behind me. Just as I turned around to do that a doe came down the field edge and smelled me. As I stood there frozen holding the stand I heard the leaves crunching behind me. I was just able to turn my uncovered bald head around to see a nice buck coming down the opposite side of the ravine. He had a wide open view of me but fortunately he was locked on the doe. He came to 15 yards and circled behind some thick cover. This gave me a chance to balance the top section and get my release on. I was not expecting to get a shot but by crouching on my stand and leaning my out on a branch I was able to reach around the tree and pick a small hole out that I could get a shot through if I was lucky enough for him to step into it. He did just that at 25 yards and the shot was true. Here he is.
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I call him a tulip sniffer but really this is just a farm that falls in city limits and has to be hunted under the rules of the management plan set by the DNR. I don't run cams but know there are big ones around. They are pretty nocturnal and stay where people don't and often can't go. From the look of him he spent most his time in a bur infested hole. If your horse had a tail like this guy did you'd just cut it off.

My biggest buck ever. I'm not much on score but if he would not have broke off what I'm guessing to be 5 -6 inches of antler he'd be bumping 150 gross as a main frame 8.
 
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