Killing mature bucks on heavily hunted public land is hard, but Michaiah Stanley has it down to a science.
Stanley, a pastor in Seymour, Iowa, is the son of Rev. Mike Stanley, pastor of Friendship Baptist Church in Highland. Michaiah grew up hunting on public land in the Ozark National Forest and at Harold Alexander Spring River Wildlife Management Area. He’s killed monster bucks in Missouri and Kansas, but he said the buck he killed in October at Sylamore WMA is his most meaningful.
Its 10-point rack scored 142 Boone and Crockett. The main beams were 26 inches long with 6-inch diameter bases and 6-inch brow tines. The inside spread of the antlers was 20 inches.
Though small compared to the 190-class non-typical that Stanley killed in Kansas with a bow, this Sylamore buck is special because of its age and because Stanley killed it on public land, unquestionably the hardest place to kill mature whitetails.
“I’ve killed some 4 ½ - and 5 ½ -year-old deer, but I knew he was the oldest,” Stanley said. “He was aged at 6 ½ -plus.”
To be precise, Stanley will send one of the buck’s teeth to a laboratory where its age can be pinpointed.
That’s not the first big buck Stanley has killed in the Ozarks. He said the first deer he ever killed at Sylamore WMA was an old 6-point that had a 19-inch spread.
The hunt for this latest buck was a textbook example of how to do things right, with a smidgen of how to do things wrong. It was during the muzzleloader season, when Stanley hunted a new spot. He put a stand up the side of a ridge the evening before and hunted it for the first time the next morning.
“I located an area that had a lot of deer activity,” Stanley said. “It had a lot of well-worn trails that were churned up and slide marks in the leaves where deer had been chasing.”
Stanley said he always looks for signs of big bucks, such as big tracks and wide, deep rubs on big trees. This place didn’t have that, but Stanley was still optimistic.
“I’ve noticed that big sign always indicates big deer, but not finding big sign does not necessarily exclude bigdeer,” Stanley said.
Stanley also knows that in the morning, wind currents tend to flow uphill.
Hunting high on a ridge puts you downwind of deer that come up the ridge to feed or bed. That takes a lot of work. In October, when it’s still warm, that means you’ll sweat.
“Most guys hunt downhill,” Stanley said.
“Their first step out of the truck is not uphill.”
That’s the first key to hunting public land. Hunt where other people don’t go.
“If it’s easy to get to, it probably has been gotten to,” Stanley said. “If I can get half a mile or three-quarter of a mile from a road, I’m going to outdistance most guys.”
Because of the effort it takes to get a deer out of such places, Stanley said he’ll only shoot a buck worthy of the ordeal.
So, Stanley was in his remote, death-march stand before sunrise on a beautiful October morning when he heard a big commotion near the bottom of the hill. He texted his dad and said either a bear or a very aggressive buck was wearing out a tree. If it was an aggressive buck, Stanley was going to challenge it aggressively. If it was a bear, then nothing would be lost.
He made a couple of bleats with his Primos can call, and then grunted deeply on his MADD Growlcall.
“I love that call,” Stanley said. “I can get a growl like a frustrated, aggressive buck. I tipped the can over a couple of times and then just started grunting aggressively, like a tending grunt, and threw in a deep, guttural growl. I topped it off at the end with a short wheeze.
“I’ve called in dozens of bucks with that combination. It’s a challenge, a dominance call. When two bucks fight, a lot of times the victor will dominance wheeze.”
It got this buck’s attention.
“The first reaction was probably 30 seconds of dead silence,” Stanley said.
“You could hear a pin drop in those woods. Then he started up the hill, and I could tell he was a big buck.
He had that defiant swagger. Every ten steps he’d stop and tear up a tree, and then he’d paw out a scrape.”
Stanley got his first good look at 20 yards in the gathering light. He said the buck pawed out two scrapes as big as car hoods, throwing dirt and leaves every which way. Then, the buck thrashed its head into some low branches and walked straight to Stanley.
He stopped the buck with a bleat at 12 steps, and that’s where Stanley noticed what might have been a gameending error. He had been holding his muzzleloaderunder his chin and had been breathing on it.
“My scope was fogged up,” Stanley said. “I almost panicked. I made him out in the scope and shot. He piled off that mountain in a death run, crossed a ravine and started up the next slope before he expired.”
Stanley thought he missed. He waited two hours to begin searching.
He found no blood or hair.
He zigzagged across the mountainside but still found no sign. He did, however, find two deadfall trees.
“There was a little opening between them, and it looked like a natural place for a deer to run.
Before I got there I could see the leaves kicked up, and there was bright red blood everywhere. I went from the lowest of lows to the highest of highs. I found him.”
Stanley sent one last text to his dad. It said, “Dad, I didn’t miss. You probably heard me whoop from where you are … Praising the LORD right now.”
Like great art, the backstory is what makes great bucks special.
“That deer means as much as any I’ve ever taken in Missouri or Kansas, just the degree of difficulty to take a deer like that off public land,” Stanley said. “I have tremendous respect for old mountain bucks. They are wily critters, and they don’t come easy.”
Sports, Pages 28 on 12/22/2013