Terrific Buck Taken Along Indiana's Yellow River on October Evening

Coty and Mandy Singleton grew up together and even dated up to 2003, but eventually broke up and Mandy moved to Michigan. Then, she moved to Florida in 2009 to attend Southwest Florida College. As fate would have it, she then moved back to her old stomping grounds in the Hoosier State in 2017 where the seemingly-destined couple picked up where they left off.

Things got serious fairly quickly from there, and it didn’t take long for Mandy to start learning about her soon-to-be hubby’s passion: whitetail hunting.

“I knew he was a big hunter," she recalled. "And I asked him to take me along and show me what Indiana hunting was all about. From then on, it was awesome!”

Mandy started taking it more seriously around 2019, and she’s “been addicted” ever since. Mandy received her ultimate whitetail buck baptism in 2022 when she harvested a 173 5/8-inch net B&C 11-point typical. Predictably, after harvesting a world-class brute, the addiction went viral!

Fast forward a bit to the evening of October 24, 2025. Mandy and Coty set out to hunt in one of their buddy stands with a favorable wind along the Yellow River in northern Indiana next to a freshly-picked cornfield. Not too awfully long after getting settled in, the Singleton's saw their first movement of the evening when at 5:15 a doe bounced out of a nearby treeline. Soon thereafter, another couple of antlerless deer followed the first doe.

The small group of deer fed in the field and were genuinely enjoying themselves when a big buck also came from the woodsline very near to where the others did prior.

“Quickly the buck turned his attention to the does that were closer to our buddy stand hidden just inside the tree line," Mandy said. "He had his nose to the ground and started running towards them.”

Mandy instinctively raised her Ravin crossbow and began her pre-shot procedure. The buck was standing in the field at 45 yards when Coty grunted to get the big boy’s attention. The buck inched about five yards closer and offered the ideal broadside shot. Mandy knew what to do and sent her Rage-tipped bolt zooming toward the bruiser.

“Both his back legs kicked into the air, and we watched him head for the opposite tree line," she explained. "We could see the heavy blood trail about two feet wide on each side of where he had run off.”

The pair then sat in the stand shaking with excitement as the dramatic encounter just played out in front of them. They watched the buck lay down about 60 yards from their position and assumed he’d soon expire.

They waited about 30 minutes before gathering their gear and climbing down to go admire their prize, but the encounter wasn’t quite finished just yet.

“We made our way down to the field and over to where he laid — only to our surprise, he wasn’t dead..." she said. "He raised his head and rushed off through the brush and woods towards the river.”

They then decided to give him a bit more time to expire, realizing from the blood trail they had followed up to that point that he wouldn’t be going much further.

About two hours later they headed back out to continue tracking. He’d only made it another 50 yards from where he went down, but made it to the river bank and had fallen down near the river itself. Now, the Singleton's knew they had their work cut out for them.

“We knew it was going to be a challenge getting him up the riverbank so we called a few friends," Mandy explained. "(We also) grabbed a canoe to load him up, and brought him back to the field.”

At that point they counted up 12 scorable points, with five points on the left side and seven on the right. He weighed about 220 pounds with a typical gross green score of 165 0/8 inches.

“We had only seen this deer on our trail camera once or twice late at night, but it was never of the full (grown) rack, nor a really good picture of him," Mandy concluded. "We came to realize that he was the one on the camera by matching the curved brow-tines to the picture, and the brow tines on the deer laying in front of us. My husband and I figure the deer to be about 6 or 7 years old.”