Matt Hvizdzak's 2024 archery kill — scoring 193 3/8 inches — has gone to the top of the Houston County, Georgia record books.
October 29, 2025
By Clifford Neames
Trying to shoot mature deer only worked out very well for Matt Hvizdzak on September 27th, 2024. It was a story of patience, as it took him a few seasons to let the buck he killed that evening grow into its massive 193 3/8-inch antlers.
It all started with spotting a young buck with nice antlers on his small farm in 2021. It was a regular, and Matt passed the deer well over a dozen times that season.
By the next season, the same buck had grown into a solid mid-130s deer that he planned to keep an eye on. It was still too young to shoot, but also had started to show great potential.
Hvizdzak originally estimated that his buck would score in the 170s, but was pleasantly surprised with how big it really was when he finally got the chance to put his hands on the antlers. In the fall of 2023, the rack jumped to 155 inches — a really nice Georgia whitetail — and Matt passed him several more times. By his own admission, it was getting tougher to do, but strong suspicion that the next season would be the one kept him from letting an arrow fly.
And when the pictures started rolling in over the following summer, they confirmed the buck was now world-class. A neighbor, who was also seeing the buck wanted Matt to give him one more year.
“I told him there was no way I was passing what I thought was a 170-inch buck in Georgia,” he laughed. “It was a miracle that he had already gotten that big without someone shooting him, and I was not going to take many more chances.”
The buck was making his presence known on the farm, but Hurricane Helene came through and made a wreck of things just as Matt was ready to hunt him. With each day, the odds were growing in his mind that the buck would either leave or be killed by someone else.
Hvizdzak had a long history with the buck. His first encounter occurred in 2021, when he passed on him at least a dozen times that season. On September 27th, as he got ready to hunt, a call came in from the neighbor saying, “I just jumped him while working on food plots.”
That news sent Matt into a spiral, but his friend — Adam Childers — said, “crazy things happen when big bucks get killed,” so Matt decided to go get in his lock-on and hope for the best.
About two hours later, Matt spotted two does, a small 8-point, and a young 4-point feeding past his hideaway. He decided to stand and draw his bow on the 8 for a little bit of practice. After getting away with that move, he noticed movement at the far end of the field about 120 yards away.
Matt stopped to pray, then watched the big deer bow up in a display of dominance before heading toward the smaller bucks. They responded by leaving as the giant deer closed the distance across the field. The huge buck stopped well within range, but turned quartering to Matt’s position, standing there for over 10 minutes. So close, and still no shot.
The impressive rack features long sweeping beams, great tine length, and multiple forks. Suddenly, its head jerked up and Matt knew the game was about to be over, so he took the best shot he had and watched the G5 MegaMeat broadhead begin the dirty work. The buck ran toward the woods line 80 yards away in a wobbling death run, but Matt wanted to be sure it was dead and decided to wait two hours before he went to look for the long-anticipated trophy.
“Fortunately, the buck had only gone about ten yards into cover,” he recalled. “But once we got close enough, it was obvious that my 170 estimate was well on the low side!”
The rack features long sweeping beams, great tine length, and multiple forks — good enough to place it in the top 20 in best all-time archery bucks in Georgia, and number one overall in Houston County!
