Retired couple Susanne and Darrel Steffy knew from trail camera photos that some good bucks were feeding in soybean fields where they hunt in northeast Maryland. The bowhunting pair had placed ladder stands along wood lines in two different bean fields about 400 yards from each other.
About mid-afternoon of September 11 they each got into their stands. They used TenPoint crossbows with scopes and Rage two-blade expandable broadheads.
“I didn’t see much except some does until about 6:30,” Susanne tells Outdoor Life. “Then bucks started showing out in the soybeans about 150 yards away. They were meandering around, but nothing was near me, so I was just enjoying the wildlife show.”
But soon a big buck stepped out of a woods edge into the beans at about 80 yards. The buck eventually began moving away toward the bucks farther out in the field that Susanne had been watching.
“He was feeding and moving along, and then he stopped, turned and started walking toward me along the tree line,” she explained. “He kept moving my way and at 30 yards he offered me a broadside shot that I took.”
Her crossbow arrow passed completely through the deer and the buck ran across the beans into the opposite tree line.
“I called Darrel and told him I’d shot a buck and to come help me find it,” Susanne says with a laugh. “That’s when he said he’d shot one, too, and he saw where it fell in the bean field he was hunting near.”
Darrel drove an ATV to pick up Susanne, then went back to recover his buck, which he’d shot about an hour before Susanne arrowed her deer.
“My buck was behind me in the woods about 70 yards away, but eventually came out into the beans 40 yards away and turned sideways,” Darrel explained. “I took the shot, and he ran 75 yards across the beans, fell, and died in the field.”
The couple loaded Darrel’s 11-point, 225-pound buck into their ATV, and called some family members to help find Susanne’s buck.
By then it was fully dark and a group of family members showed up to start looking for her buck.
“We found Susanne’s arrow, and the blood trail was easy to follow across 125 acres of beans,” Darrel says. “We found her buck dead just inside the wood line.
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“We asked our 21-year-old grandson Carter Greist to pull it out of the woods and load her 13-point, 200-pound buck into our side-by-side ATV.”
Both bucks are already at a taxidermist for mounting, and the pair of bowhunters is planning the next hunt.
“I’ve been seeing a pretty nice 10-point piebald buck, and I’d sure like to take him,” Susanne says. “But it could be a nice one for my grandson Carter to take instead.”
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