Today’s blog on Don Helbert’s buck of a lifetime is from Big Deer reporter Dean Weimer. Cool story and testament to two things: To get a 180-buck takes perseverance and creative thinking.–M.H.

 

In the summer of 2023, a very cool 6×4 buck showed up on Don Helbert’s trail cameras, and while Don pegged the deer to be only 3 years old, he had the Indiana hunter’s attention. “I was on the fence about shooting him,” he says.

 

That year the early October archery season proved uneventful. But on Oct. 23, Helbert got another, and better, look at the mystery buck. He was on his way home after work and caught the buck chasing a doe in his headlights. The next day he got a flurry of images of the buck, and that was when he noticed the rack had sticker points on his right G-2. Don dubbed him “Stickers,” and started formulating a plan to get him.

 

The morning of October 30, the wind was favorable for an elevated blind that Helbert had built overlooking an old pasture behind his in-laws’ pole barn. As first light gave way to legal time, he had 8 bucks milling around in the bean stubble adjacent to the pasture, sizing each other up as they so often do this time of the year. He caught movement and noticed a doe about 40 yards away. She made her way into the picked beans and every buck was watching her.

 

“Just to the west of the stubble is a 40-acre field of standing corn,” Don says. “I peeked over there and there he was!” Stickers started to trot towards the other bucks, and Helbert let out a loud grunt to get his attention, to no avail. Stickers saw the doe and immediately headed toward her. He chased her around in the bean stubble for a bit, and she eventually came into the pasture.

 

“She brought Stickers within 60 yards, broadside,” Don recalls, and, “I had the crossbow rested on him.” Sixty yards may be a chip shot with a crossbow at a target, but on a live big deer? “I prefer 40 yards or less,” says Don. He let out a soft grunt, which in hindsight was a mistake. Stickers looked right at the hunter and began to walk downwind of him. The doe took off, taking her would-be suitor with her. along. That was last time Helbert saw Stickers during archery season. 

 

The cornfield remained standing all the way through the 2023 firearms season, and Don is confident the buck spent most of his time hunkered down there. He did get a few images of the buck in late November. Then Stickers disappeared on camera until December 30th, but by then the season was all but over.

 

On February 8, 2024, Don received an image of the big buck sans the 6-point side, and immediately made plans to go searching for sheds a couple weeks later. He drove his side-by-side out to a known bedding area near where he had gotten images of Stickers, and began looking. He quickly found the buck’s left side, and then diligently looked for the right side for the next two weeks, but never found it. 

 

Throughout the spring and summer antler- growing season, Don got not one picture of Stickers. October 2024 archery season opened, and still no buck. By mid-October he was really starting to worry that Stickers was no longer around. Then he got the break he was desperately looking for. 

 

“On October 20th, I got a picture of a large non-typical in the same area I got images of Stickers the year before,” he explains. “It never dawned on me that I was actually looking at Stickers, because his rack was more typical in 2023.”

 

As fate would have it, a few days later as he was driving home from work, Don saw Stickers chasing a doe in the same field as the year prior. Then he got a nighttime image of the buck on Oct. 29. Next morning, Helbert was in his observation stand. At first light, he saw Stickers exuding his dominance and running other bucks out of the area. The target buck disappeared into a nearby woodlot. About 10 minutes later he popped back out in the open and started towards Helbert’s stand.

 

Stickers stopped about 100 yards out and worked a scrape. Don grunted at him, and the buck looked his way and went back into the woods. “I knew from the previous year not to overcall him,” Don says.

 

Don took a break, then went back the same stand that evening. He saw a total of 26 deer, but no Stickers. Over the next week, he got a few more images of the buck, and even saw Stickers a few more times, but he was always locked up with does.

 

The second week of November the buck was visible, but never offered an opportunity. Don was worried, as some of the other local hunters were also onto Stickers, and this was the final week of early archery. The firearms season would open on Nov. 16.

 

Helbert got creative. He constructed a “cheap wooden blind that I could tote around with my side-by-side.” On Wednesday November 13, Don pulled the blind out to the spot where he felt he’d have the best chance at Stickers, sprayed it down with Scent Killer and left the area. He wouldn’t hunt the spot again until the firearm’s opener. 

 

Don formulated another somewhat unorthodox strategy for the gun opener. “I made up my mind that on opening morning I would wait until light and drive around the block to see who was hunting,” he explains. To his chagrin he counted 12 orange-clad hunters. He went back to the house and got ready, then cautiously headed to his blind. He noticed some big, fresh tracks on his way and that got him pumped up.

 

Don saw one small buck and a doe with fawns during his morning sit. Undeterred, he was back in his makeshift blind by 4 p.m. His nephew, Brett, called and said he’d successfully put a stalk on a good buck. Don congratulated him and offered his help, but Brett told him to hunt.

 

About then, deer began to enter the field. A large group of does and fawns milled around. An hour later, a young 10-pointer came in from the west and started chasing one of the does around. Helbert was on red alert and caught more movement to the west. Stickers! He’d ranged one of the does earlier at 160 yards in the same location. Don was confident out to 200 yards with his Henry Long Ranger .308.

 

The buck was quartering slightly away, moving very slowly. Don fired. The buck did the famous “mule kick” and ran into the woods. Like so many hunters do, Don sat there awhile and started second-guessing the shot. 

 

Later, Don and his daughter, Tawney, and her husband, Jordan, went to where the buck was standing, and found blood and hair. Slowly they worked their way into the woods… Stickers had jumped a fence and expired 20 yards later! Interestingly, the buck died about 30 yards from where Helbert found his shed several months prior.

 

Stickers was an incredible deer, a basic 5×5 with 6 non-typical tines that totaled 23 4/8”. He had a 19 ⅝” inside spread, great mass, and cool, chocolate-colored antlers. He was scored by Fremont, Indiana’s Bob Harris at 181 5/8” non-typical.