Today’s guest post from Flatlander, longtime friend of BIG DEER:  

Hey Mike, reporting in on the last week of the Illinois archery season. We’ve had 10 inches of snow dumped upon us, and the deer are still a slave to their stomachs.

I’ve been playing cat and mouse with a buck we’ve called “Captain Hook” for his unique brow tines. He was elusive during the pre-rut and disappeared for almost 6 weeks.  Most recent trail cams at Christmas revealed he was alive and back, moving among our food plots.

Cold temps and flooded low ground had deer on their feet on the warmest part of the day, when I had a close encounter with Captain Hook on New Year’s Eve. A doe below my stand didn’t like what she saw and blew the buck out of the area. Fast forward to this past Saturday night and the big 10 came in again only to wind me from several hundred yards. I’d apparently gotten sloppy on my ritual of scent control.

I went home and washed everything and stored it an ozone container…scrubbed my boots and even cut my hair short and scoured my body before the hunt. I went in as scent free as humanly possible.

An hour before sunset 33 deer came by including 6 nice bucks, one amazing 12-pointer in the mix but no shot.

The last deer to move through was Captain Hook, following a one horn buck in to the sugar beets. This was his one and only mistake this season, and it was my best day afield this year!

As you always say, “Hunt hard and stay after it. Success will come if diligent!”

Good luck to all in the coming year and God bless, Matt “Flatlander” Cheever

Way to stick with it Flatlander, congrats man!

Today’s great guest blog from Tony Woodruff:

Mike: Just wanted to send a quick story about a hunt a few weekends ago.

I took my 13 year old daughter bowhunting on the family farm up in north-central Nebraska. We couldn’t get to the primary location that I wanted to hunt Saturday morning because of the wind, so we hunted a field edge and only saw some does and fawns.

I slipped into a draw that afternoon where I hoped there would be evening activity, set up a pop-up blind and brushed it in. We went back to the blind with a little over 2 hours of daylight left. We were in the blind getting our chairs situated when I looked up and spotted a deer at the edge of the trees about 60 yards away. He appeared to be a good buck.

We quickly got situated where I thought he might come by and got ready. We didn’t have to wait long…he soon started down the trail that would take him right by us. Just as he stepped out of the brush he spotted the blind and stopped 25 yards away, looking right at us.  He hesitated just long enough for Kayla to make the lethal shot with her crossbow. This all transpired within about 10 minutes of us getting to the blind.

Since I am cursed with being color blind I have a very hard time seeing blood. We recruited some help to track him. It took about an hour as he didn’t leave a great blood trail, but I finally spotted him in a thicket.

He was by far Kayla’s biggest of the three bucks she has taken. I was deployed last year and we didn’t get the chance to hunt, so my daughter taking such a great buck this season made it even more special.  It’s such a great feeling to be able to pass on the thrill of the hunt to my kids. Kayla’s smile says it all.–Tony

2018 will go down as a tremendous rack year, as some giants are being shot across North America. Will it also be the year the record is broken for the highest-scoring whitetail buck ever killed with a bow?

This picture has been all over social media. Here’s a report from a source I trust:

This buck was killed in Edgar County, Illinois between Paris and Chrisman by a disabled Veteran Luke Brewster of Virginia. His close friend was hunting the buck and he came down and got a shot on him his first day on the hunt. The deer was 100% free range and legal after being investigated by the IDNR.

It has 39 countable points and green scored 311” shattering the non-typical whitetail Illinois state record.

The current archery world record is 294″ taken in Ohio in 2000….Illinois current archery non typical record is 267 1/8″ taken in 2003 by Davy Jones. Time will tell where this Prairie State Giant nets out at.

NEED YOUR HELP: If Luke is indeed from Virginia, my home state, I’d like to talk with him asap about this giant. I have cameramen coming here to Fauquier County November 13-20 to film with me, and we’d love to hook up with Luke and interview him for my TV show, BIG DEER. If anybody knows Luke, tell him to track me down, or send me his contact info. Thanks.