The first two months of deer season here in Missouri have been pretty tough. Big mature buck sightings were hard to come by and it often felt like we were hunting a ghost. We were hardly even getting any trail pictures of nice bucks. It's pretty discouraging to be honest. Once gun season kicked in, we started to have a couple of nice deer move in and this buck we named Twigs started showing up. He got his nickname because we had several pictures of him with twigs and plot screen stuck in his rack.

Twigs started to move daylight on a green plot and it was time to make a play on him even though the weather was 60 degrees (20 degrees warmer than the previous day). It was a last-minute decision, and I didn’t have a cameraman, so I packed in all the camera gear along with my Mathews bow.

Twigs showed up about an hour and a half before dark and it took him all the way to within a couple of minutes of legal shooting light as he fed slowly to get within bow range so I could take my shot. For the longest time, it didn’t seem like he was going to come in close enough. I said a prayer under my breath to the Good Lord above and asked him to pull that deer into range so I could have a shot. I believe He heard me and answered my prayer! The hit was back so as a precaution we waited almost 24 hours until the next afternoon to recover the deer. What an awesome buck! Want to give a big thanks to Logan Burk, Eric Harris, and Mark Maniaci for helping me recover him!🇺🇸🦌