Todd Staley’s 12-pointer

EDITOR’S NOTE: Here in the words of Morton bowhunter Todd Staley is the story of his hunt for a 12-point Fulton County buck.

I had been seeing a ridge where does had been crossing, so I used my climber one night to hunt there.

I didn’t see anything. Two days went by before the wind was right to hunt it again. Well the night before the wind was going to change I hurt my ankle in a soccer game. I woke up could not put a lot of pressure on it.

So I called my hunting buddy and told him I wasn’t going in the morning because there is no way I could climb a tree with a climber. So I went to work for a couple of hours and got my guys lined up that day to work.

Later I called by hunting buddy and asked him if we could use his climbing sticks to hang a stand in the tree where my climber is. We got to my farm at 1 p.m. and got out of my truck near the stand site. As we were unloading the sticks and stand a doe ran by my this tree with two nice bucks behind her.

We couldn’t believe it. We watched them run around this ridge for about 5 minutes. They could have cared less we were there watching them. If it was shotgun season I could have shot the bigger of the two bucks.

Finally we get my stand hung. After 40 minutes a nice 120-inch 10-pointer walked by. I thought to myself, “He will be a great deer next year.”

A minute later I saw this massive body deer walking through standing corn right at me. I could not see the rack real well but knew he was a shooter. The corn was blocking my view of the rack. That was probably a good thing.

He turned broadside to me at 20 yards walking away from me. I still couldn’t see the rack because he was walking behind a limb that had leaves still on it.

But I knew he was big so I pulled back and waited. He finally took a few steps. I was only focusing on his vitals and the fact if he took one more step he would be in some tall corn, since he was standing in some knocked-down corn.

So I had to bend my body a little to make the shot. I hit him just where i wanted and he only went 70 yards.

I waited an hour. My buddy and my dad helped me load him in my truck which was not easy.

My buddy said, “I bet he scores 158.” I said, “Great, don’t really care because he is a nice, big, mature deer.”

The next day at the taxidermy the owner asked me, “Do you know what you have there?”

I said, “No. Just a really nice deer.”

He laughed and told me the deer should score in the 180s. I about died when he said that. Once in a lifetime. I’m so blessed.