Oklahoma Hunter Arrows 20-Point Buck

“The first thing I did was grab my phone and check my trail camera,” Adair told MeatEater. “Sure enough, that buck was standing in front of my feeder at 7:11. I was beating myself up over it.”

Adair had been thinking about that unusual buck since the previous season when it showed up on a midnight trail camera. The photo showed a buck with a mess of kickers and extra points around the base. His cousin saw it the last week of the rifle season but was hunting with a bow, and the buck was out of range. Adair spent the offseason hoping the buck made it through. In early September, he got an answer.

“Just a couple of days later, I had him on camera in the daylight. I just couldn’t believe it. That really lit the fire and got it going,” Adair said.

But other obligations kept Adair out of the deer woods on the opening day of archery season. His former high school basketball coach called him up and asked him to referee a few games. Adair agreed without checking the dates. When the coach asked if he’d still be at the first game on Thursday, Adair realized he had a conflict with opening day.

“I couldn’t cancel on him and leave him hanging,” Adair said. So he spent the evening of the opener in a high school gym. As soon as the game was over, he pulled out his phone to check his trail camera.

“Sure enough, that evening that deer was under my feeder,” Adair said. “That made me want him even more, knowing he was there and I wasn’t.”

The buck had been showing up regularly at the feeder in the mornings. Worried that slipping into the area before daylight might bust the buck, Adair decided to hunt evenings instead. He didn't see the buck that first weekend, but the trail camera kept catching it around the same time each morning throughout the following week.

By Friday, Adair had decided he’d have better luck hunting in the morning. His plan was to slip in quiet well before daylight to get set up well ahead of the buck’s regular breakfast schedule. Then he slept through three alarms.

With plans to try again Sunday morning, Adair barely slept Saturday night. He grabbed his bow and headed out in the pitch dark. Adair snuck in, climbed a tree overlooking the feeder, and settled in at 5:55, well before daylight.

A couple of does came in right at shooting light. A few more followed, along with some small bucks. He even had a seven-pointer walk right under his stand. None of them seemed to suspect he was there.

“It was getting pretty daylight when it dawned on me that he would have to be the next deer to walk out because every deer I’d seen on my trail camera was standing right in front of me,” Adair said.

Then he heard footsteps coming from behind him. “I was cool, calm, and collected up until that point. When I heard those footsteps coming, my heart started thumping,” Adair said. “I don’t know how the deer didn’t hear it.”

When the deer finally worked around to the edge of his field of vision, Adair realized it was another doe. “My heart about fell out the bottom of my boots.”

He took a few deep breaths and tried to gather himself. If a doe could get him this worked up, he figured he’d have a hard time keeping it together if the buck with all the kickers showed up. He watched the doe walk toward the feeder, then caught movement behind her.

“I saw a bush move and then saw his horns come out from behind it. My heart went right back to thumping just as hard as it was before,” Adair said.

The buck stopped about 15 yards from the feeder and stomped his foot once. Every deer on the feeder eased off to get out of his way. Adair figured this was good for him because fewer eyes would be watching when it came time to draw his bow. But when the buck settled in at the feeder, it was facing right at him.

After about three minutes, which felt like an absolute eternity to Adair, the buck took a few steps and turned broadside. Adair slowly raised the Mathews Z7 he got in a trade for a deer blind he’d built, and clipped on his release. When he moved his shoulder to draw, the buck threw his head up and looked right at him.

“I thought I just blew it,” Adair said. But then he turned and walked back the other direction, offering another broadside shot.

“There was a limb that was good camouflage for me, where he couldn’t see me too well. I pulled my arm up and drew back. I put my pin on him and picked out a rib that I liked, and I let it fly.”

Adair’s arrow was tipped with a random Muzzy fixed four-blade broadhead that he had for the past five years.

“A few weeks before the season, I was at a bow shop, and I was looking at all the broadheads they had hanging on the wall there because I was thinking about it,” Adair said. “They were like $75 a piece. I didn’t think I could make myself drop that much on a broadhead, so I passed on them and went with the one I had at the house.”

That broadhead did its job. When it hit, the buck jumped a couple of times, then stumbled forward and scrambled into the brush on its knees. “It sounded like a herd of elephants crashing around in there,” he said. “Then it just went dead quiet.”

Adair says he’d managed to hold it together until that moment. Once the woods went quiet, he started shaking like crazy. He sat in the treestand and FaceTimed his friend Zach Deal, who made fun of him because the shaking made it impossible to see.

After making one more phone call to his dad, Adair waited another 30 minutes before climbing down. He found his arrow, broken in two, about 10 yards from where the buck had been standing when he shot. Then he followed a solid blood trail for about sixty yards. The first thing he saw was one side of the rack sticking way up above the deer’s body.

“Putting my hands on him was indescribable. I leaned down in front of him and picked his head up, and I was just speechless. It was a surreal moment. It hadn’t quite sunk in yet, and I don’t know if it still has,” Adair said.

Trail camera photos had given Adair a sense of the buck's size, but it wasn’t until he saw the rack up close that he really understood everything the buck had to offer. The rack was loaded with extra points and kickers around the bases that the camera angles never really did justice to.

After counting them up, the buck had 20 scorable points. Adair and Deal measured the rack that day and estimated a gross score of 202 6/8 inches. On Tuesday, a wildlife department employee taped it at 190 6/8 inches net as a nontypical. That score is unofficial, and the rack will be measured again after a 60-day drying period.

Adair is understandably proud of that buck. He’s also proud that he didn’t need any fancy or expensive gear to get it. When asked if he had any advice for new or young hunters, he said, “Don’t feel pressured like you have to have the latest and greatest equipment. You can get by with just about anything. Be proud of what you’ve got. Just get out in the woods and have a good time.”

Photos via Kenneth Wayne Adair.