A successful hunt two years in the making

“I kept saying to myself: ‘Don’t mess this up’ when I started drawing the bow,” Dustin Skaya told me. “I ranged him, and he was walking by at 31 yards. I stopped him and released the arrow; I could see blood immediately.”

“He took off running through the bean field and into some taller grass, then down a slight grade and out of sight. He was going farther than I wanted and I kept saying ‘go down, go down’ as I watched him run off,” Dustin continued. “I thought I heard him crash but it’s hard to tell with the wind.”

“I waited a half hour before I got out of the stand,” said Dustin. “I went to the arrow and it didn’t really have any blood on it. I thought maybe I gapped him and I was worried. I didn’t want to push him so I headed back to camp.” Gapping refers to the arrow passing between the lungs and diaphragm without hitting a lung, usually happens when the deer is fully exhaled.

Their camp was about an hour away from where they hunted. Dustin recorded the shot on a Shotkam from his bow and they reviewed the video. Dustin didn’t feel right leaving the deer lie all night so they headed back to track the deer. They arrived at the shot site at 11:30 p.m.

It was a long track; OnX said just about 300 yards when they found the deer. “That’s when the party started,” said Dustin. “We knew he was big; just not that big. We drank a lot of Busch Light when we got back to camp that night.”

“It green scored at 196 5/8 inches non-typical,” Dustin told me. “There wasn’t any ground shrinkage with this one.” Most hunters will never see a buck this large.

Dustin first planned to go on this hunt two years ago, but due to the travel restrictions with COVID he wasn’t able to. About a year ago he started the planning for this hunt again with some friends he went to high school with. They have been hunting the area for about 10 years. About two weeks before their hunt a couple of the guys set up three dozen trail cameras. Each member of the group rated their top four spots numerically. Everyone rated the spot Dustin hunted at as number one, due to a large buck showing up daily during daylight. They then rolled dice and when your number came up you hunted the spot remaining that you rated the highest. The idea was to eliminate the question of ‘should I have hunted there instead of here?’ It also made it fair.

Dustin selected where to place his stand based upon a northwest wind. He hung the stand around noon and waited until he planned to crawl up into it.

“It was still 80 degrees when I shot the buck,” Dustin told me. “It was a warm day. Early on I saw a couple of fawns run out into the field. Their mother never came out into the field and they just kept moving around and feeding.’

“About an hour later I saw another deer walk into the field, 200 yards to the North. I put the binos on him and it was obvious he was the target deer,” Dustin continued. “The wind was perfect, in my face and steady the whole time. I had a piece of floss out so I could monitor the wind.”

“It looked like he might walk out deeper into the field and away from me,” Dustin said. “When he saw the fawns he stopped and watched them for like five minutes. Then he started walking straight to them and that meant I might get a shot. I kept saying ‘Don’t mess this up.”

Dustin did a lot of ranging while the deer walked towards him, and he selected the best spot to stop the deer and take the shot based upon his stand and the path of the deer.

“I shot the deer at 7:58 p.m. and it was broad daylight where we were hunting at the time,” said Dustin. “His inside spread was 18 ¾ inches, I didn’t really measure the outside spread. He was still in full velvet at the time. He was aged at 6 ½ years old.”

“I did a lot of camp cook detail the rest of the week and I didn’t mind at all,” Dustin said.

Congrats Dustin!

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