Indiana Hunters Target, Tag Big Whitetail on New Property

Northern Indiana hunters Dillon Craig and brother-in-law Keegan Bruner acquired permission to hunt a new piece of whitetail real estate going into the 2024-25 Indiana deer season. Although only a 40-acre parcel, the hunters felt the spot had major potential. In addition, it had been logged out one year prior, so it had plenty of new bedding spots and offered a lot of first-year forage growth. The piece of the puzzle they didn’t have up until later in the summer was a bonafide mature target buck to focus their efforts on. That all would change once summer transitioned into fall.

As luck would have it, a mature, heavy-racked buck would make his presence known to the duo through trail camera images they first received on September 2. Although plenty of bucks are still velvet-clad on this date, the buck the two had now begun to focus on was not. 

“From there on out Keegan and I focused all efforts on this deer," Dillon explained. "This farm was new to us, and going into it we really had no idea how the deer were truly using this property.”

Although deciphering how the deer would use this area would take a bit of time, they decided they’d go in slow and try to keep their intrusion to a minimum.

“We kept the pressure low and waited for the right opportunity," said Craig. "With it being a smaller piece, we had to be careful how and when it was hunted. Initially we placed cameras in high traffic areas, but as September wore on we added cameras to active scrapes. This was the key to killing this deer."

On September 7th, they got an image of the buck in what they felt was a main bedding area, but soon after the buck seemed to disappear from that immediate area. Then on September 11th Keegan’s baby daughter was born. Not to be outdone, on Sept. 16th Dillon got the surprise of his life — his baby boy was born six weeks early! Dillon and his wife, Rachel, spent 10 of the next 15 days in the ICU at a nearby hospital.

Although they hadn’t given the buck a proper nickname at that point in time, they'd decided to now honor the buck — and their newborn babies — with an acronym combining the first initials of Dillon’s son, James; and Keegan’s daughter, Lucy. The buck would become known as LJ from then on.

In the meantime, LJ ghosted them for the rest of September. On October 12th though, the buck started hitting a scrape located right in the middle of the property. At that point they were still unsure exactly how the bruiser was using the property.

“We still didn’t know how he was traveling, or where he was bedding,” Dillon said.

What did become apparent soon thereafter is that this particular scrape seemed to be LJ’s, and that’s what eventually would cause his demise.

Craig explained, “He started hitting it every 6-7 days during daylight between 5-6 p.m.”

They now realized that LJ was killable. It was decided that only one or the other would carefully hunt the spot when all conditions — especially the wind direction —were 100% in their favor.

“Through October I believe we only hunted maybe six times between the both of us. We still had no idea where he was bedding or coming from,” said Dillon.

Still, despite their best laid plans, neither of them had laid eyes on the buck as of yet. Then they got a major break: LJ once again worked his scrape at 6:30 on October 22. At that point, the hunters realized that LJ would most likely be back in the next few days. As luck would have it, they also received winds from the north and northwest that kept their scent blowing away from one of his main bedding areas.

Keegan hunted one of the stands they’d placed on Saturday morning of the 26th, but didn’t see LJ. Then the afternoon rolled around and neither of them were sure where they’d be hunting later in the day. They were both back and forth in their minds trying to decide between properties. Dillon decided that Keegan should go back and hunt the scrape stand, and that he’d go to another property. Keegan, however, thought Dillon should get the opportunity. So it was settled.

“The corn on our property had been taken out the prior week," Dillon said. "As I pulled up, farmers to the west were taking out corn as well. I got ready and headed to the stand with 4 ½ hours to hunt. It was warmer but there was a good north wind.”

As he was walking along the picked cornfield, he bumped what he thought sounded like a big deer. He could only imagine that LJ was the deer, but couldn’t know for sure.

“Looking back, I made the mistake of walking down the edge of the woods. Was it LJ? That’s all I kept thinking as I stood there for 5 minutes praying for things to calm down," he said. "After 5 minutes I slowly kept working toward the stand. The field edge was torn up with scrapes; six or so just in that 220-yard walk. I got up into the hang-on we placed in July.”

This stand was approximately 200 yards from the scrape in the middle of woods and along the corn field. The north wind was blowing his scent right out into the corn stubble.

The hunt started fairly slowly and remained that way until the sun began to creep toward the western horizon. Several does and fawns were feeding in the corn a couple hundred yards away. At this point, Dillon didn’t think he’d be putting an arrow into LJ that evening, and was just enjoying the autumn splendor around him. Then at 6:20 his phone buzzed as he received some images of another target buck working a scrape on another property.

“I was upset and texted my wife that I went to the wrong property!” he said dejectedly.

At the time he had no way of knowing that his comment to his wife would prove to be incorrect.

“The does kept feeding toward me and that’s what I was focused on," he said. "If I had not been watching their reactions I would have never seen LJ coming. At 6:40 one of the does perked up and was looking past me down the field edge. There was something coming.”

At this stage of fall, the trees were still retaining most of their leaves, which made it very hard for Craig to see what might have grabbed the does’ attention . He put his binoculars up to his eyes and started looking. At first, he could make out a couple tines, but still didn’t know which buck it was. He turned to grab his bow in case it was LJ, and when he turned back around he immediately knew that it was him — and that he was closing in hard on his position!

LJ had made it to 20 yards from the waiting hunter, but Craig didn’t have many shooting options at this close range. All he could do was wait at full draw. The buck needed only a couple more steps for the shot, but then he stopped at 15 yards and stopped directly downwind of our now frazzled archer.

"He was looking up, licking his nose trying to get my wind, and quartering hard towards me," he said. "It was now or never. I let the arrow fly.”

LJ then let out a roar that Craig is sure could be heard by all other living creatures in the immediate area.

“It happened so quick," he explained. "‘Did I really just shoot the biggest deer of my life?’ I was in shock, but it didn’t hit till a few minutes after I was in complete disbelief. I’ve killed a handful of 140-150-class bucks, but this one was different. The Lord was surely watching over me that day."

The Craig Buck is mostly-typical with an amazing 6x5 mainframe. It has just enough extra points to make it interesting, and sports very good mass measurements from 4 4/8 to 5 ⅝ inches. It features a 19 0/8” inside spread, and has a very distinct beige-brownish coloration.

Overall, the buck grossed 171 4/8” on the typical frame, with deductions yielding a gross net score of 164 2/8” on the typical frame. The four non-typical tines add up to 8 ⅜ inches, and when added in bring the non-typical score to 172 ⅝ inches. Dillon decided to go the typical route with his buck, and thus after subtracting the non-typical growth ends up with a very respectable 155 ⅝” Pope and Young typical.

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