In March of 2023, Gage Bohannon's turkey hunt was interrupted by this buck, and he spent all of that fall season and the 2024 trying to track it down again.
December 27, 2024
By Clifford Neames
“I had this piece of ground in Kentucky to coyote hunt,” Gage Bohannon begins his story. “Then, I was hunting turkeys and spotted a big buck! That deer had enough rack to get my attention late in March of 2023, and by the end of the August grew into the largest buck I had ever seen!”
But he was elusive enough that Gage ended up tagging a bully buck which was running off some good deer the following fall, ending his buck season early.
In a twist of fate, the mega-wide deer returned on October 22nd, so Gage tried to get his wife in there for the rifle season. That plan fell flat. They never saw the buck, which seemed to be leading a charmed life, avoiding all their efforts in the procress.
By December and January, he was blowing up the cell cameras again with tons of daylight pics.
“I was happy to know he had made it through the season,“ Gage said. “I figured he would be bigger for the next one, too! I went looking for his sheds, spending hours searching over the spring, but I never located them.”
The prep for fall of 2024 began early, with minerals in the ground by the end of turkey season.
“I was monitoring several cell cams and by August, and he was showing up once a week in daylight,” he recalled. “By September, I had him patterned and hung two stands.”
Gage saw the deer at 300 yards on opening day, but then its movement became sporadic. The cat-and-mouse game increased until the last two weeks of October when the big buck went MIA for over two weeks.
With the rut approaching, Gage figured he would show again soon, and on November 1st he got a picture over a scrape.
The next morning, he climbed into a new stand for his 34th sit of the season — the hours were certainly piling up! Gage grabbed his phone to text his wife, and when he looked up his target buck was 300 yards away out in the open.
“I had to go to a kid’s soccer game, so I left everything hanging in the tree and climbed down wondering if I would see him again,” he explained. “I went to the game, had a quick family lunch, and made it back to the tree by 3:50 to continue my hunt.”
Two and half hours passed with little action before a young 6-point showed up. Gage heard another deer behind his stand and stood slowly to see what it was. There was no mistaking what he was seeing — the 6 1/2-year-old buck was looking up at him, too!
Incredibly, he was able to release a quick arrow which found the sweet spot, and just like that his hunt was over.
The giant rack has 30-inch beams, heavy mass, long tines, stickers, and a droptine. One brow is missing, but it still scored a little over 190 inches.
