Lucas Norby was bowhunting elk in Colorado in late September when he obtained a textual content from his spouse, Paige. Her message was to let him know {that a} buck he’d been watching for 3 years was now transferring persistently within the daylight. However he’d must get house to Wisconsin quickly if he wished to hunt it, Paige insisted.
“Paige was going nuts as a result of he was lastly transferring in daylight by way of an space the place I may have an opportunity to take him,” Lucas tells Out of doors Life. “This buck was a roamer. He was so far-ranging that I nicknamed him ‘Cowboy.’ We’d get pictures of him one to 2 miles aside. He simply drifted on a regular basis.”
Lucas explains that Paige had been monitoring a number of mobile path cams they’d positioned on some family-owned land close to Eau Claire. Lucas had put a pair cameras close to his tree stand, which was located alongside a journey hall he believed the buck was utilizing. However the one pictures they’d gotten of the buck have been all late within the afternoon.
Photograph courtesy Lucas Norby
“He bedded on the high of a ridge and would solely transfer in late afternoons from his bedding space alongside the sting of a CRP area and into soybeans to feed,” Lucas explains.
After he obtained again from Colorado, Lucas hunted his stand for the primary time on Sept. 26. Simply earlier than darkish that night, he noticed the buck 100 yards away because it moved from the ridge to the bean area. Three days later, on Sunday, he was again in the identical stand, and he though he had the buck at 45 yards, he by no means obtained a shot alternative.
“The following day was heat, so I didn’t hunt. However the next night, a cool entrance was within the forecast, and I used to be again within the stand the afternoon of Oct. 1,” Lucas explains.
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Round 6 p.m. that night, he watched Cowboy come down off his bedding space on the ridge and head for the ag fields. The buck fed for a bit at 100 yards, then entered the CRP area and walked towards Lucas.
“When he was at 24 yards I drew, anchored, and launched my arrow,” he says. “He was quartering away, and the arrow went in behind his shoulder and exited behind the other shoulder.”
The deer took off in excessive gear as Lucas watched it sprint throughout the bean area and disappear right into a tangle of leafy cowl. Lucas finally obtained down from his stand and located a blood path. After following it some time, he determined to cease and again out and return the following morning. By then, Lucas had recruited Paige, alongside together with his father, John, and their neighbor to assist discover the buck. He additionally reached out to the Deer Society and located somebody with a blood-tracking canine who may assist them get better the deer.
Photograph courtesy Lucas Norby
“That positive made issues simpler. We took the canine to the final blood I had discovered the earlier night time, and the canine went proper to the buck. He’d solely traveled about one other 100 yards earlier than dying.”
Lucas says the buck weighed 253 kilos and was 6.5 years previous, in keeping with his taxidermist. Cowboy’s rack had 14 scoreable factors, and so they gave it a inexperienced rating of 186 7/8 inches.
“We’ll put him in our home,” Lucas says. “However we have now a whole lot of mounted animals there, and plenty of of them are Paige’s. So the place precisely Cowboy will grasp is but to be decided.”