Every year in late winter and early spring, I spend a lot of time shed hunting and scouting. I've had great success doing this in the past, although prior to 2005 I'd never found a shed antler that was large enough to make me concentrate solely on one buck. In February 2005, however, I found a really nice piece of bone. It was a main-framed 5x5 with a few sticker points. The brow tine and G-4 were both 8 inches long, while the G-2 and G-3 were both longer than 10 inches.

Talk about shock value! Clint's amazing 22-point giant had a 31-inch outside spread and a 28 7/8-inch inside spread. Photo courtesy of Clint Barnes.

I was elated -- my biggest shed ever! I searched long and hard the rest of the day for the other side, but to no avail. The next day, however, I was lucky enough to find the matching shed about 800 yards away from where the first antler had been found.

This shed was just as big, and just a little more gnarly. The buck would gross somewhere in the high 170s as a typical. I couldn't wait until the fall of 2005 to try to outsmart this awesome buck. I thought that I had found the sheds off the biggest buck in the area. But little did I know that there was another buck roaming the area carrying a rack that made my sheds look small!

LOOKING FOR MR. BIG
Sept. 15, 2005, opening day of bow season in Nebraska, couldn't come fast enough. Prior to that, I scouted every evening when I had time, glassing soybean fields until dark. I saw many nice bucks, but never "my" buck. Early in the antler-growing period, I did see a buck that intrigued me. The antlers were coming almost straight out of his head, with extreme mass and multiple brow tines. They were past the ears, but they hadn't branched off yet and they showed no sign of getting any narrower.

This was not the buck whose sheds I had found, but this buck was certainly going to be a wide load! I didn't realize it then, but I had just laid eyes on a buck that stood in a class by himself. We would meet again, and he would become my buck of a lifetime.

I am primarily a bowhunter. I love the adrenaline rush I feel every time a deer walks close to my stand. When a mature buck comes into bow range, the adrenaline makes my heart feel like it is going to explode. It is a feeling that is hard to describe. And even then, I think my passion for deer hunting is what intensifies the moment of truth. I spend countless hours in my tree stand every year waiting for that particular moment. When it all unfolds, the time spent is worth its weight in gold.

In Nebraska, gun season runs 10 days, starting on Nov. 12. This just happens to coincide with peak breeding dates in most of the Midwest. Although I love to bowhunt, I also realize that the odds of harvesting a mature buck increase when these animals have other things on their minds, like searching for special does.

Since I try to harvest only mature bucks (along with a few does for management purposes), this is a time of year that I can't afford to miss. Although the adrenaline doesn't pump quite as hard as it does when I'm drawing back my bowstring, having a big buck in my cross hairs still makes my blood boil.

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