Knocking on Doors Pays Off in Oklahoma with a Big Buck Down!

Jace Hannon was driving through a neighborhood in Muskogee, Oklahoma when he spotted a bachelor group of whitetails. Being an enterprising young man, he decided to knock on doors to see if he could gain permission to hunt them. His initial effort proved fruitful, and he soon had a cell camera in place on a 16-acre tract. 

Pics began rolling in, then something totally unexpected happened. A new buck with a huge velvet non-typical rack appeared for one, and only one, pic. With nothing else to go on, Jace figured he better find more land. So, he expanded his search to a one-mile circle around that camera and landed another two-acre place. 

He hung another camera there, and the next day a 150-inch buck showed up. Jace told his father he was going to hunt that one, but the next pic was the huge non-typical again. Jace named him Jungle buck, because it was so thick where he hung out, and the hunt was on.

Jace added corn to keep deer in the smaller property and soon other bucks began showing up. The Jungle buck was in there every night eating vines and began daylighting after a few more days. “I took a day off from school to hunt, thinking I had a good chance to take him”, Jace recalls. “But he was a no-show!”

Then news of a weather change was forecast. Jace said to his father, “I think this is going to happen sometime in the next 24 hours.” After being dropped off at 5 AM the following morning, Jace was up the tree in his saddle well before daylight ready for action. As he hung there in the dark, he could hear sparring nearby. Later, as the sky began to slowly brighten, he spotted the buck that was always with the Jungle buck, just six yards away.

Then he heard the faint steps of another buck approaching the opening below. The Jungle buck popped into view in the early light and Jace began drawing his bow. This put the other buck on alert, and it began to ease away. The target buck also picked up that something wasn’t right and began moving too. “When he got to 21 yards, I needed to shoot”, Jace remembers. “But my sliding sight was set for 30…” “So, I put all the pins on his vitals and released the arrow!”

The shaft struck the bigger buck in the spine and he went down, as Jace grabbed for another arrow. But when he lined up for the next shot, the deer had already expired. “I called my dad out on the lake to tell him”, Jace smiles. “And he said, NO WAY THAT JUST HAPPENED!” 

Then Jace called his cousin, Jackson, telling him to bring the sled, and got another reaction. “I’LL BE RIGHT THERE!”

Close examination revealed the buck suffered from Cryptorchidism, a condition where the testicles remain inside the abdomen. The resulting deficiency of testosterone causes them to hold antlers and velvet, producing these highly unusual trophies. 

Jace got his buck to the processor and taxidermist right away.

He says, “I may never get another one like this, so he is going up on the wall!

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