(by Mike Grossman)
Iowa offers whitetail deer hunting at the highest level available anywhere. I feel blessed to have such a gift available for me and my family to enjoy. Below is the account of my most recent trophy taken 45 minutes from the Des Moines metro area on 11-20-09 at 8:05AM.
I have been pretty bad with the story sharing this year. I think that as I invest more time to this sport the sharing on the net is one of the things that will lose out. This buck entered my world in June of this past summer as he bumped in front of one of my cameras while I was working on a nearby food plot. Since I had never seen this guy before I added a camera to the back of the same tree he passed earlier, just to see if I could be missing something. Two of the trail camera pictures I captured are featured in this post.

My son Nate and I watched him in the beans in September and even though he was a much smaller net deer than the other he was with he really pulled your eye his way. My son had to make me stop staring and pointed out the other, much higher grossing buck. I think I would have ignored the other deer completely without him shaking me out of my trance.
As the season progressed both bucks remained visible and I kept adjusting my setup accordingly. At the same time I was working other quality bucks the same way on other properties. My action was good all season and I have never passed on the quality of bucks that I allowed to walk this year. Part of my growing in the sport experience, I guess?
In the end I became more aggressive with my setups. On November 20th, the morning of the harvest, I backpacked in and set up in a funnel bedding area and just as I had hoped the bucks where alone and seeking. He was the third buck to work through and I recognized him almost immediately even through the thick brush. I remained seated because I felt he was going to be in the right place for the shot and I wanted to avoid the extra movement. As I grabbed my bow and removed my sight pin cover (small panic since this should have been removed at first light) I relaxed and thought about the shot. My body shook briefly from nerves and I got back to business. He stepped out perfectly and stopped right on cue, after the shot he bounded off a few yards unaware that he was dead on his feet or what had just happened. He walked a little further and tipped over.
I shot a quick email to a group I had just been communicating with 5 minute before the shot. The first communication ended with “much to my disappointment I was able to finish this email without being stop by a deer”. The follow up was “I just shot my target buck!” A message from one of my buddies in the group called him “a text book buck”. I agreed. I think I will call him “Text”.
@Grossman_Mike