Sixteen days afield in three states, and I finally got to put my tag on a buck, but not the way I had hoped. My whitetail season began in Kansas with a bow tag, moved on to Indiana’s gun season and finally produced during Illinois’ second firearm season. The hunts were being filmed for SHE’s Beyond the Lodge TV on the Outdoor Channel.

Josh Fiscus, co-owner of Iron Gate Lodge in southeast Kansas, started sending me trail camera pictures in the middle of the summer. The giant bucks in velvet certainly were proof of the outstanding genetics in the area. When we arrived in camp the weather was windy and warm, with a tornado watch. Not a good thing to say the least. We saw deer, but no shooters.

One of the other bow hunters in camp got a shot at a great buck, but missed, and then filmed a mega-giant just out of bow range. But me, nothing. This soon turned in to standard operating procedure for the next two weeks of hunting in three states. Lots of deer, lots of encounters with small bucks but no shooters. If someone would have told me in the beginning I was going to hunt in Kansas, southern Indiana and Illinois through most of November and not see a shooter, I would have laughed at them.

We headed to Indiana for the opener of their gun season. We were hunting private property in southern Indiana, not far from the Kentucky border. Although not well known for monster bucks, the farm we were hunting had produced a couple of big ones. We stopped in at American Taxidermy in Boonville to meet the landowner, Randy Rhoades and talk with Dean Stallion and Frank Schoenbachler, two men who have hunted the area for years. We looked over some maps and took their advice on where to go.

Unfortunately my unlucky streak was still holding. Opening morning brought heavy rain and high winds. Randy checked in with the processing plant and no deer were brought in on opening morning, a first. During the rest of the hunt we saw several small bucks and does, but no shooters.

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Next we headed to Illinois for the opening of the first firearm season. A couple weeks earlier we met landowner Mark Beck at the Boar’s Nest restaurant in Athens and handed over one of the HS Boiler Room ground blinds. Mark put it next to a corn field and brushed it in for us ahead of time. It was going to be our back up in case bad weather moved in or we needed to come back for the second gun season and focus on food sources. Mark’s food plots had been pretty much wiped out by late floods so the only food left was this small cornfield. The weather was really messing with my Midwest hunting trips!

Opening morning we were in a ladder stand next to a creek bed and along a strip of tree plantings where the deer were known to travel during the rut. A decent buck came to within 150 yards but my cameraman would not give me the ok to shoot. He wasn’t happy with the quality of the footage. Since that predicates pulling the trigger, we had to let the buck go.

After that we had several encounters with small bucks, but no shooters. We tried moving to different locations, tried stalking a ten pointer the cameraman had spotted while we were out scouting. No luck. On the last evening a mature buck came in to the decoy, just like he was supposed to and ended up broadside at 40 yards, just like he was supposed to. His entire left antler was broken off just above the brown tine. My unlucky streak secured.

We returned to Menard County for the second gun season. Opening morning was a brisk sixteen degrees with a wind chill of six. Nothing ventured within eyesight. That afternoon Mark’s sons Cooper and Parker joined us at the cabin. They both gave me hugs for good luck and it worked! We returned to the ground blind and I shot a big doe right at last camera light.

Mark and Cooper were hunting on the opposite side of the farm and saw a nice buck. Cooper was kind enough to let me go hunt from his blind the following morning while he was in school. We saw several small bucks that were pushed to our area by the neighbor walking his dogs. Still, no shooters.

Stan was home for a few days between hunts so he came out to help devise a game plan for Saturday morning. We decided to set up in the strip of tree plantings we had hunted first season and Stan and Mark would walk the far end to see if they could push something our way. It worked!

We spotted a buck about an hour after we set up. It was a small buck and we were just about to let him go when I noticed his limp. The buck was struggling to walk, limping heavily on his back left leg. The buck spotted us, but could not run, he slowly turned broadside and tried to go around us but was struggling. We decided to take him since in his current condition his chances of survival looked pretty bleak. The buck was a seven pointer with broken tines and a broken hip. He was pretty run down and didn’t have much fat on him to help make it through the winter.

Although I didn’t get the buck of my dreams, I did get to do something special. Mark’s neighbor has seven young children and had sent word he would take any deer we wanted to spare. So after sixteen days of hunting, we got to donate a fat doe and that injured buck to this family and feed seven kids. From sixteen to seven; my unlucky streak was finally broken. And the lucky Parker- Cooper combo kept the magic going as Cooper got his first deer a few days later!