Editor’s Note: Luke Brewster of Virginia, hunted in Edgar County, Illinois, and harvested the world’s record non-typical white-tailed deer with a bow on November 2, 2018. This harvest was certified by Buckmasters (https://buckmasters.com/), Pope and Young (http://www.pope-young.org/world-records_main.asp), and Boone and Crockett (https://www.boone-crockett.org/). I had the opportunity to interview Luke at the Buckmasters Deer Show in Montgomery, Alabama, in 2019, and I asked Luke to describe how he found and took this huge buck that scored 327-5/8 inches.

I was watching some does coming into my bow stand, when I took my binoculars down and saw a buck standing 30-yards from me. He walked in to a scrape that I previously had ranged at 26 yards. The buck started pawing the scrape and licking the branch above it. I quickly hung-up my binoculars, grabbed my Hoyt RX1 bow (https://hoyt.com/) with a Grim Reaper Whitetail Special Pro Broadhead (https://www.grimreaperbroadheads.com/), and came to full draw. When the arrow hit the buck, he took off running, and I was disappointed. I thought that my broadhead had hit him in the shoulder, rather than behind the shoulder. I saw the fletching side of the arrow as the buck was running off, and then I saw that bit of the arrow fall out of his side. Later I learned that the broadhead had passed all the way through the buck, but it hadn’t fallen all the way out of him. The rest of the shaft was still in the buck, so when the buck began to run, the shaft broke in two, and that’s why the fletching half of the arrow fell out of the buck.

When I finally got down from my tree stand, I went to the spot where I shot the buck and found 12 inches of the arrow. The arrow’s fletchings were soaked with blood, so I knew that the broadhead probably had gone all the way through him. I walked about 10 yards from where I found my arrow, looked across the creek that the buck had jumped over and saw him. I was really relieved when I spotted this trophy buck dead on the other side of the creek because I really thought my arrow had hit bone, and that I didn’t get a lethal shot.

Once I reached him, I was so thankful I could put my hands on his antlers. I also noticed that the big drop tine on the buck’s antler was missing. I looked at the portion of the antler where that big bulb-like drop tine had been broken off. I retraced my steps back down the blood trail that resembled a red carpet. I walked down the trail and found the tine at the base of a tree where my big buck had broken the antler off. I picked up the antler and put it in my backpack. Then my friends helped me get the buck out of the woods and to the taxidermist. At that time, I didn’t really know what a huge deer I had.

My hunting friends and I had trail-camera pictures of this buck for the past four years. Two years before I shot him, this buck was on the top of our Shooter’s List of Bucks to Harvest. The year before I took him, one of my hunting buddies, Justin Cearlock, took a 40-yard shot at this buck, but he didn’t see a branch hanging down from a tree that was in the path of the arrow. The arrow deflected off the branch, and when Justin measured the distance he was from the buck, the shot was 43 yards. This buck never was seen again, until I shot him. That was the only time anyone else had a shot at this buck.

To learn more about hunting deer, check out John E. Phillips’ book, “How to Hunt Deer Like a Pro,” available in Kindle, Print and Audible versions, at (http://amzn.to/YpoQHA). If necessary, copy and paste this link into your browser.

Tomorrow: Luke Brewster Explains More about Taking the World’s Record Deer.