November 2026
A Wisconsin Public Land Bruiser: A 16-Point Archery Whitetail
Hunter: Kyle Vach
Species: Whitetail Deer
Location: Wisconsin
Method: Archery
I woke up on Halloween morning with no intention of going hunting. I wanted to go, and the weather looked perfect, but I foolishly considered saving a vacation day and holding my spot for the following morning. After checking the forecast and the calendar one more time, I decided it couldn’t hurt to head into work late and squeeze in a short hunt first.
After a long walk into the woods, I quietly climbed into my hang-on stand about twenty minutes before first light. My favorite part of hunting is listening, waiting for the snap of a branch or the crunch of dry leaves to signal something is moving in. That morning, though, the wind was ripping through the timber. It felt like I was in a wind tunnel, and every leaf still clinging to a branch chattered nonstop. Fortunately, right around shooting light, the wind completely died. The woods went still.
Rattling on Halloween
As soon as legal shooting hours arrived, I pulled out my rattling antlers and started a sequence. Within minutes, a young eight-point buck approached from the west. As he closed the distance, he swung downwind and began scanning the woods.
At the same time, both of us heard movement. Crashing and grunting erupted to the northeast. The young buck snapped to attention, ran a few yards towards the noise, stopped to listen, then bounded forward and disappeared straight into the chaos.
The crashing continued in short bursts, followed by long stretches of silence. Each time the woods went quiet, I assumed the action had moved on only to hear the chaos erupt again. It sounded closer each time, but I couldn’t see a thing.
Grunting Him In
About an hour into the hunt, I noticed a deer moving north of me. It may have been the same buck from earlier. I found him in my binoculars and sent out a grunt, but he showed no interest. As I lowered my binoculars and scanned the rest of the woods, I spotted another deer cruising through. This one was big enough that I could see his antlers from 150 yards away. I grunted again, but he slipped out of sight.
Almost immediately, I heard movement north of me, angling west. The deer were dispersing from the rut action I had heard earlier. Then I spotted another buck traveling the same path as the smaller one from before, about eighty yards out. I let out a grunt. He stopped and looked my way. One more grunt, and he turned and started coming straight toward me.
I eased my bow off the hook. My mind bounced between grabbing my rangefinder or clipping on my release. Several well-used trails lay ahead of him, anywhere from twenty to forty-five yards, and he could take any of them. But as he kept coming, it became clear I wouldn’t need the rangefinder. He wasn’t using a trail at all.
He was going to end up right under me.
When he got within thirty yards, still coming in head-on, I drew my bow, certain there was no way he wouldn’t catch the movement. By twenty-five yards, I was fully anchored, my pin settled. Somehow, he hadn’t seen me. Then he stopped and looked up. He dropped his gaze, took another step, and looked up again. I could tell he was about to bolt.
It was now or never.
The Shot
I settled on a frontal shot, aiming for the heart. From there, everything went into autopilot. I don’t even remember squeezing the release. At the shot, he dropped his head, slightly altering the arrow’s entry, but it still went where it needed to. The arrow passed through his neck and into his heart.
He ran about sixty yards, stopped, flicked his tail, and began to walk away. He paused several more times, changing direction and looking around, before disappearing into thick brush to the west. Watching him through my binoculars was the first clear look I got at him. He was the biggest buck I had ever seen in my twenty-three years of hunting with a bow in hand.
A buck like that doesn’t go down easily. My concern grew, and I began questioning the shot.
As soon as he vanished and I decided to give him time, the woods erupted again. Sticks snapped. Grunts echoed. A doe came barreling toward my tree with four bucks strung out behind her. At the base of my tree stand, she cut hard east. The first two bucks, both small, followed. The next two were noticeably larger.
Her sharp turn forced them to slow down and search. Just past my tree, the two larger bucks locked eyes a few feet apart and lunged at each other. They fought hard for several seconds, directly below me. I managed to take a quick video of the bigger buck. It wasn’t exactly how I planned to keep the area undisturbed, but once the deer cleared out, I slipped down and quietly exited the woods.
I went home knowing I would be using that vacation day after all.
The Blood Trail
The next few hours crawled by. I paced the floor. An old broken arrow was lying on a ledge next to a few of my deer mounts in the basement. Holding it up to a mount, I visualized how the shot would have entered and where it would have ended. This helped, but I never let myself feel too confident. There is always a chance that you won’t find a deer. All I could do was wait and consider calling a tracking dog, something I had never done before.
After three hours, I took up the trail. At the spot where he stood when I shot, there was no blood. After a brief search, I moved to where I had last seen him stop and change direction. I took a guess at the spot, and as I walked up, blood appeared immediately.
It wasn’t a heavy blood trail, but there was enough to follow without crawling. It led through thick brush and into a wide-open area filled with three-foot-tall weeds. Tracking became harder. Old beds and patches of dead grass fooled me more than once, raising my hopes before revealing nothing.
I was now standing where I had last seen him from the tree. A few steps farther, I found him, exactly where he had disappeared.
A True Giant
Walking up on him, I finally understood how big he truly was. I have taken many deer over the years, along with several elk, and this buck more closely resembled an elk lying there. His body was massive. He carried sixteen points, and with a few longer stickers, he could have pushed past twenty points. I set my bow beside him, took a few pictures, and headed to the truck, calling my dad and a few close friends with the news.
I didn’t weigh him, but I needed help loading him into the truck. My guess is that he was well over 200 pounds, and he had the largest heart I have ever seen. After the sixty-day drying period, his official gross score was 163 7/8 inches. Tooth analysis later confirmed he was five-and-a-half years old.
Some neighboring properties claimed they had seen him for years and said that he was starting to go downhill. That didn’t bother me one bit. He was a true giant in every way and a major milestone in my hunting career.
I will be proud of this hunt for the rest of my life.
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