An Oklahoma Bowhunter Heard Rumors That the 180-Class Buck He’d Been Hunting for Years Had Been Hit by a Car. They Weren’t True
Before bow season opened in the Sooner State, Carson Heskett was getting consistent trail camera photos of a massive buck in Central Oklahoma’s Logan County. Heskett had been watching the deer grow for three years, and he knew the buck was in its prime. He just had to wait for the season to open in October.
“But in the first week of bow season, neighbors and friends said that a giant local buck had been hit by a car,” Heskett tells Outdoor Life. “That’s about the time I stopped getting trail camera photos of the deer. So, I pulled my camera out of a rye field area and started hunting elsewhere. I thought he was dead.”
Weeks later, in November, Heskett heard from friends that another massive buck had reappeared in the area. Judging from their description of the deer, he knew there was a good chance his target buck was still alive. He just had to confirm it.
“I put a trail camera back out in the rye field where I had photos of him in September, and I got pictures of him that first night,” says the 24-year-old oil-field worker from Crescent, Oklahoma. “I sure was glad to know he was still alive.”
Heskett had placed his trail cam near a 25-foot-tall ladder stand in a cottonwood tree on the edge of a privately owned, 300-acre rye field. It had been a productive spot for Heskett over the years, and he was in the stand that next morning.
“I saw him that morning 100 yards away with a doe,” Heskett explains. “But they fed around awhile in the rye field, then wandered away. That evening back in the stand about 4 p.m., the same doe and buck came into the field 250 yards away. They were in the field for an hour and worked toward me a bit. But they eventually turned and walked out of the field the way they came into it.”
The following morning, Nov. 20, Heskett was back in the same stand. He saw a few does and small bucks, but not the deer he was after. So, he took a midday break and returned to the stand for an afternoon sit. That’s when things started to happen.
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“I was in the stand just before 3 p.m. 30 minutes later a couple of does came running into the field 200 yards away, and he was chasing them,” Heskett says. “They were running right to me. One doe stopped at 85 yards, but the other one kept coming to me and the buck was right behind her.”
Heskett had a bait pile placed 35 yards from his stand, and the doe headed his way went straight for it. The buck held back for a bit, until 10 more does emerged from a thicket and walked straight to the food pile.
“I knew the buck would come to check the doe, so I got ready,” he says. “He came in facing me, and I drew.”
The buck then approached a doe and pushed it with its head, turning the doe. When the buck took another step, it exposed its chest at 38 yards. Heskettt took the opportunity and made his shot.
His expandable broadhead passed through the buck’s ribcage right behind its shoulder. The buck ran 60 yards and fell dead in the rye field.
“That broadhead was incredible,” he says. (He was shooting a G5 T2 100-grain expandable.) “The blood trail to my buck was the best I’ve ever seen.”
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Heskett field dressed the buck on the spot. Then he called his friend Reid Hopson to help load the deer onto an ATV and take it home for processing.
A taxidermist will make a shoulder mount of the buck to hang in Heskett’s home. He says Dallas Barber, a biologist with the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation, has already looked over the buck and green-scored the 17-point rack at 187 inches.
“I can’t believe I was able to close the chapter on this ancient buck,” Heskett says. “It’s my biggest whitetail ever.”
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