Mike Hymel takes his deer hunting serious, and the fact that he hunts public property just pushes him to look for every advantage he can find. So when he found a line of hookings on Dewey Wills Wildlife Management Area, he backed out and pulled out his secret weapon.
“Once I found the big hookings, I didn’t really pursue looking around the area,” Hymel said. “I used some aerial maps to determine which way I thought deer would be moving.”
Basically, he looked for variations in colors to determine where the topography and cover changed. And then he hatched his plan for a Jan. 6 hunt.
“I knew the general direction these deer would be moving, and I considered the wind direction and then went in and set up a ground blind,” Hymel explained.
On the day he packed his blind the nearly mile-long hike, Hymel didn’t leave until the sun was throwing its first light over the thick woods.
“I waited until it was just breaking daylight so I could sneak in without a flashlight,” he said.
Hymel’s approach was confirmed about 7:30 a.m., when a coyote eased out of the woods near the hook line.
“It came within 15 yards of my ground blind,” he said. “He didn’t see me, and he didn’t smell me.”
An hour later, he saw his first deer of the day: A big doe ran through the woods up wind of his position. Ten minutes later another doe broke out of the brush in the same spot.
The concealed hunter focused his attention on that area, and was quickly rewarded.
“As soon as I saw the first (doe), I knew a buck was probably chasing them,” Hymel said. “About 15 seconds after (the second doe came out), I saw some big horns in the button brush.”
Hymel could tell little about the calcium atop the buck’s head, except that it was crazy. Click here to see other views of the big deer’s head gear.
“I thought, ‘My God! Look at the size of those drop tines,’” he said. “I about had heart failure.”
However, the deer was on a mission.
“He pretty much ran out and stopped, and then ran straight at my blind,” he said. “While the deer was running to me, I was moving my rifle slowly to the right.”
The deer was only 40 yards out when the hunter finally pushed the rifle around and into his shoulder.
“When I did that, the deer stopped and looked at me,” Hymel said. “I think he nailed me.”
But it was too late. Hymel put the cross hairs on the center of the deer’s brisket and squeezed the trigger.
The deer ran about 60 yards before piling up.
Oddly, Hymel said the big-racked buck shrank on him, but even with ground shrinkage the hunter had downed a monster.
The buck carried 14 scoreable points, including an incredible 10-inch drop tine hanging off the left side of the rack. It green scored 165 4/8 inches Boone & Crockett.
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