Don Brenneman took this gorgeous velvet whitetail in Maryland on September 9th, 2025.
October 11, 2025
By Clifford Neames
Don Brenneman cranked up his Maryland bow season in a big way, taking a giant velvet 7x7 on his first sit of the year.
“This one is a good bit larger than anything I have encountered before," he explained. “But I was hunting on familiar ground.”
Don grew up playing on the 120-acre property, taking his first deer there a long time ago. Many years later, when it went up for sale in 2015, he bought the tract. Since then, he and his son in law, Derek Workman, have coverted it into a whitetail haven — clearing land and adding food plots in an effort to grow mature bucks.
The big buck first drew their attention in 2024 as a noteworthy 10-point. He stuck around all summer, then went missing two weeks after that bow season had opened.
Brenneman and his son-in-law first saw the buck in 2024 as a 10-point, and they were thrilled when it made it through to the next bow season. “I was happy to see he had made it through the gun seasons, when he showed up on the place again this past summer,” Don recalled. “We suspected that he might do that vanishing act again, so we needed to be ready when the 2025 season opened.”
The buck seemed to like the alfalfa in the food plots, so Don set up a blind on an eight-foot platform covering the field he frequented. There was one medium-sized issue with that — it required an uncommon easterly wind to access and hunt it, but it was that or nothing!
Unfortunately, when the season opened Don had to be out of town and rrecious time was ticking away. When he finally got free on September 9th, he had planned to hunt another property, but was blessed with the perfect wind.
“I was headed into the property and thought I saw the big buck across the field with another deer in my headlights that morning,” he remembered. “But he didn’t show up during my morning hunt.”
Although Brenneman had been hunting the 120-acre tract for many years, he bought the piece of property when it went up for sale in 2015. Don took a break for a few hours, then headed back in at 3 p.m. to close out the afternoon.
“My view through the windows in the blind was restricted so I had to move around a lot to watch the field,” he laughed. “I was surprised when he showed up only 60 yards away. I hadn’t seen him coming. Derek had named him “Double Seven" due to the split browtines, but I changed that right then to Double 07!”
Seeing the buck up close and not on a trail camera picture was a real gamechanger.
“He was huge,” Don expressed!
With a score of over 190 inches, Brenneman knows that this buck will be a tough one to beat. The wind was dying off as the buck begin to close the distance to the blind, and Don began to wish he had brought his Ozonics unit along on the hunt. There was no time for regret, however, so he grabbed his crossbow and readied for the shot. When the buck got to 24 yards, Don touched the trigger and watched the lighted nock bury into its chest. The oversized whitetail lurched away across the field as Don felt the aftereffects of what had just happened.
“It was a bunch of mixed emotions for sure," he said. “I decided to let him lay for awhile before trying to make the recovery, but when we returned he hadn’t gone far.”
The velvet buck has long beams with great symmetry, and a rough score of more than 190 inches. Don will certainly have a hard time topping that one!
