Tennessee College Student Arrows 160-Inch Velvet Buck After Class

He made it home to Watertown, scarfed down something to eat, grabbed his Mathews Traverse bow, and by 3:30 p.m. was settled into his treestand.

Owen got the first glimpse of his target buck last summer, when it showed up on a trail camera overlooking a clover food plot. But the buck disappeared as quickly as he’d shown up. “Last year, he looked the exact same frame-wise and had the exact same tine curvature, but he had none of the junk. He was a completely perfect 9-pointer last year,” Owen told MeatEater.

He wouldn’t see that buck again until it reappeared in June on that same food plot. “All he had was a little bit of his main beam, a little bit of his brow tines, and I could just tell he was going to throw something weird on that one side. I couldn’t tell exactly what it was going to be, but I could tell he was going to be a little bit odd for sure,” Owen said.

But the buck only made rare appearances, sometimes going more than two weeks at a time without showing up on the trail camera. Owen figured that buck wasn’t living near that food plot, just occasionally passing through.

Owen got a few photos of the buck passing through before making an adjustment to his trail camera.

Owen moved his trail camera further up the mountain the last week of July to a small oak flat smack dab in the middle of thick cover. That’s where he hit pay dirt. Within two days, the buck was making near-daily daylight appearances.

Owen figured he found that buck’s living room. But there was just one small problem—getting to that oak flat would require hiking almost the entire length of the property and risk bumping the buck on his way to the stand. So he talked to a neighbor and got permission to access through their property, where he could get to his treestand by simply walking down a fence line.

With access figured out, Owen had one more detail to dial in. A few days before the velvet opener, he went in and moved his stand to get a better angle on the oak flat. The wind on top of the mountain was hard to predict, so Owen was counting on the thermals to carry his scent down and away from where he expected his target buck to come from.

By the time Owen climbed into his treestand the afternoon of opening day, he had another reason to feel good about his odds. The buck hadn’t shown up on camera for two days, which was unusual. But it made him confident that the buck was due for an appearance.

It was brutally hot, with temperatures in the 90s that afternoon, and Owen had heat and mosquitoes to contend with. He wasn’t in the stand for an hour when he heard something moving behind him.

A smaller 8-pointer that he described as the deer’s running buddy appeared. He had several trail camera photos of those two bucks traveling together all summer.

“That deer came up and worked directly underneath me. I heard something behind him, and then I could see legs coming through the trees. I would have bet you money it was going to be him,” Owen said. But it wasn’t. Another smaller buck was trailing the 8-pointer. For the next 25 minutes, he watched those two bucks feed under his stand before they split up and went in different directions.

“I was glad when they got out from underneath me because the bugs were bad. I wanted to swat the mosquitoes,” Owen said, laughing. Despite the relief, Owen thought it was strange that the bucks had split up. It was the end of August, when bucks were still traveling together in bachelor groups. He didn’t have much time to ponder it, however.

Around 6:30 p.m., Owen caught movement in the direction one of the smaller bucks had gone. The deer he’d been thinking about all summer was working a small tree with his antlers at about 80 yards from his stand. Owen watched him work the tree for about 10 minutes before making a beeline for his stand.

As the big buck closed the distance, Owen saw the two smaller bucks coming in behind him. “I guess he had sent his scouts in and determined that the coast was clear.”

The buck seemed to check up a bit at 30 yards, which made Owen nervous. He even considered going ahead and sending an arrow, even though the buck was still standing partially in thick cover.

The buck only ran 70 yards before toppling over.

Then the other two bucks passed the big one and waltzed right through Owen’s shooting lane. That seemed to be all the encouragement the big buck needed. As soon as he stepped toward the gap, Owen drew his bow. The buck reached the gap and stopped broadside, and Owen released.

“The shot was just a hair high,” Owen said. “But I had hung that treestand really high because I was worried about my scent. It was high enough that the exit went out perfectly.”

The buck spun around and headed back the way he came. Owen watched him run about 70 yards, almost to the exact spot where he’d been working his antlers on that small tree. Then the buck fell.

“My first phone call was to my dad,” Owen said. “I don’t know who had wanted me to kill that deer more. Me or him.”

Then came the hard part. The buck was too far back and the terrain too steep to drag him back up the mountain the way Owen hiked in. So Owen, his dad Jim, and his friend Levi McPeak spent hours dragging the buck around the base of the mountain. It was 11:00 p.m. before they finally got him out.

Owen with his buck before taking it to the taxidermist.

The buck is now at the taxidermist, waiting for a shoulder mount. It’s the biggest buck Owen has killed to date, with a rough score of 160 7/8 inches in velvet. “All them drop tines as a cluster were over 18 inches,” Owen said. “That was what really made him impressive.”