Hayes Nance of Collinsville put up his game cameras at the beginning of September and got his feeders going. Pretty soon a good, mature buck showed up at 3 a.m.
“It kind of got me excited because I had at least one good buck in there,” Nance said. “I tried to hunt him in the special velvet season in September, but he didn’t come out, so I was just excited to wait for bow season to open. When bow season opened, the buck started ‘daylighting’ at that point. That’s when I knew I had a good chance of getting him, but everything had to be perfect.”
Nance, a firefighter in Meridian, works two days on and two days off. When his next off days came up, he went hunting for the buck and caught him out during the day. Nance actually captured some good footage on his GoPro cameras as the buck came out into the shooting zone. However, the buck never got in range so that turned out to be a “little bummer.”
“After seeing the buck, I could not sleep,” Nance said. “It was like he was haunting me. He was such a big deer, and I was pumped to go on my next off days. 
“I went on my next opportunity, and he came out again with this young 8-point. Just as they were coming into range, the smaller buck spooked and ran a few yards. The good buck actually jumped in front of the opening I had, so I pulled back really quick and I rushed a shot. He was about 8 yards and I actually missed, shooting under him!”
Back at it again
The next available day Nance had to hunt found him in his stand at 3:15 p.m. He had three does come into his range feeding on acorns around 5:30 p.m., and he was careful not to spook them and miss a chance at the buck. If they detected him and snorted it would probably run off any bucks in the area.
“Around 5:45 I heard something behind me, and I turned around and I saw the smaller buck,” Nance said. “The next thing I know, I see a darker, big, heavy set body deer behind him in the woods. Then he walked up under my stand about 8 yards away.
“They were very skeptical about stepping out in the opening near my stand. They were just kind of hanging around the feeder, and then the buck made his way down the old road, which is about 15 yards from me, and I grabbed my camera and panned it to an opening. I thought I would shoot him in this opening right there if he kept coming. Sure enough he kept walking, just following that road and it was going perfect.”
Nance bumped his camera as he was pulling back his bow.
“The buck stopped at 15 yards,” he said. “There were a few small limbs in my way, but I pulled back. He stopped in a small opening and I shot.”
Buck down
“Thwack!” The broadhead smacked the buck and went right through his heart as Nance made a perfect shot. The buck ran about 70 yards before Nance heard him crash in the brush and start kicking. The hunter knew he had made a good shot and that the buck was down.
“I got my binoculars up as soon as I could and tried to find him,” Nance said. “But I couldn’t see because the woods were still green and it was thick with leaves and branches everywhere. So that’s when I decided to back out and call for some help to track him.”
Nance and a friend waited about an hour or so and then started blood trailing the buck, but Nance decided to go to the spot where he’d last heard the buck go down.
“I just took off walking to where I heard him go down, which was probably about 30 yards from where we were standing,” he said. “I shined the light in the woods and I saw his white belly!”
The massive Clarke County buck had a tall rocking chair rack that didn’t have any antler shrinkage either.
“I just wanted to thank the Lord and Joey Daugherty for the opportunity to harvest my first bow kill buck,” Nance said.
Although Nance has harvested many deer, this was his first buck taken with a bow. The monster whitetail weighed 202 pounds, sported a tall rack with 10 points and scored 142.
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