I had been eyeing a piece of public land on the maps for a while that I never made it to so finally I decided I was just going to make the extra drive and check it out. Access was hard, basically an impassible level B road which meant that it wouldn’t have gotten much pressure all throughout the later parts of the gun season here in Iowa. For those that don’t know, most of the gun hunting pressure in Iowa comes in the form of pushing deer, so after finding an area that could have potentially avoided this I knew the deer would be stacked in there. So I made the long walk in to a brushy bottom that I knew would be great bedding. This unit has a lot of brushy grassy/cedar bottoms and the rest is pretty much big timber surrounded by ag. I really like keying in on the brushy bottoms for bedding in areas like these. Especially on public land, there typically aren’t trees to hunt out of a treestand in these brushy areas which typically means less pressure and makes them a perfect candidate for ground hunting.
As I got close on the dead calm day I saw a shooter buck get up and walk off the other direction. I knew he had gotten nervous at the sound but it was about the lightest bump you could have. I ended up getting to the edge of the bottom to get a feel for it and make a plan for the morning knowing he would be right back in there. I got up early enough the next morning to be in the spot a full hour before shooting time, if anything would have been in the bedding area already I knew they would spook with the crunchy ground and calm conditions so I had to get in there before anything came back to bed. As the sun came up I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and hearing. I found myself in the middle of a rut fest with bucks grunting and chasing in late December. With all the deer stacked back in this area I must have found the last hot doe. I realized there were several good bucks but one was on a whole different level. It was the biggest buck I had ever seen, and he just escaped managing to sprint through every opening chasing the doe. Even got within 60 yards which would have been a chip shot with the muzzleloader if only I could have gotten a clear shot or stopped him. They worked off and I heard them bed down so despite my lack of food and water, I knew I had to hunt all day, I couldn’t leave him.
My patience wore off at noon and I decided in order to optimize my chances at getting him I needed to get a little closer in case they went a different way or didn’t travel far in the evening. They had bedded closer than I thought and I just barely bumped the giant buck, he wasn’t sure what happened and I ended up watching him for minutes with again no shot. Discouraged, I decided to go back and get right in the center of the heart of the rutting activity from the morning, I figured there was a chance that the doe would still drag him back through that evening and knew there were multiple other shooters in the area. An extremely slow afternoon gave way again to a total rut fest with 45 minutes of light left. Still bummed out from spooking the giant buck, I was trying to think of what to do the next morning when I saw more legs walking through the brush. I turned the camera on and as he walking into my one opening I realized how big he was. I stopped him just in time and brought my gun up for a quick shot through the brush at 50 yards. It felt like I barely had to aim as if the stars aligned and I swear I could hear him hit the dirt. As I walked up to him it started to sink in that I had just killed my biggest buck ever and had the most amazing day of hunting in my life. All day I was thinking the big one from the morning was the only buck I wanted, talk about the lowest of lows after bumping him. Then my buck stepped out that afternoon and my heart about skipped a beat. It turns out that it was an entirely different buck, but I couldn’t be happier with him. OnX helped me find possibly the hottest area in all of Iowa that day on public land and I had the best hunt of my life.
As always, the full hunt can be found on our YouTube channel. If you want to live through this exciting hunt make sure you check out the video here: https://youtu.be/fECrfgZIf-A