Great Buck, I’d be taking the wife somewhere nice after that one :) 

Awesome buck! Great memories made. Great job!

Congratulations, good one 👍  all I have ever hunted is public land and have taken several nice bucks in the last 50 years, keep up the good work.

Congrats, happy birthday to your daughter I hope she’s feeling well! And our wives be knowing our thoughts 💭 😆 

Man that is an inspiring story. A lot of people would have given up.  I am really happy to see when peoples hard work pays off. Congratulations 

That’s great. Congratulations and thanks for sharing the story. God blessed keeping family first 👍

Thank you all for the kind words! It's the best time of the year. Good luck to you all!

credit to GoWild for not putting a character limit on posts. that's a good story

Thanks for the feedback. Felt weird typing all that out for a hunt but my memory is garbage and wanted to document it so I didn't forget. 🤣

The fever buck 

Long story, long.. 

I should not have been in the woods. 

It was the night of my 5 year old daughter's birthday party, I was committed to not hunting and was watching the Michigan game. She was laying on the floor acting off so I checked her temperature. She had a fever so I told the wife. We had to call around and cancel the party. An hour later I was hovering around my wife not saying "anything". She said, "you want to go hunting don't you"? "The thought crossed my mind", I replied. "I just thought I would see what you thought". I got the green light so off I went. 

I have amazing private land to hunt but made it my top goal to get a "good" buck on public land in the early season and let my private rest. Saw this buck in a private field with bordering public just before dark in early August.  He was the biggest buck I've ever seen near public land. Needless to say I came up with a plan to try hunt him that night. 

It wasn't long before I narrowed down one of his beds on public and just waited him out. 
On October 8th he gave me a 20 yard shot with 5 mins of legal shooting light left. I double lunged him but he still managed to give me a heck of a tracking job.  He crashed though some really thick bottom land before crossing onto private. I was devestated. "Am I going to lose this deer?"My buddy and I had all but given up. I planned on talking to the property owner the next morning so I could pick up the blood trail but we were nervous that he could be "claimed" by another hunter. 

After 2+ hours of tracking and grid searching my buddy suggested we walk down the road we were parked on to see if he crossed back onto public land even though last blood suggested no such thing. We walked about 40 yards down the road and my buddy calls out "I've got blood". I used some not family friendly expletives and we picked up the blood trail. Keep in mind this blood was over 100 yards away from the last blood we saw. 

After about 100 more yards of tracking I got to put my hands on him. This double lunged, public land stud made it over 300 yards after I arrowed him. 

I've put down a few good bucks on private land but have never and probably will never be more proud than I am of harvesting this buck. 10 years of hard work, research and learning through mistakes and I finally made it happen. 1st good public land buck.

The Fever Buck: A Public Land Success

Rusty B

Are you sure?

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