Mike Nauman’s 28-pointer

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story appeared Feb. 27, 2007 in the Peoria Journal Star

BY JEFF LAMPE

Mike Nauman of Chillicothe was among the best of show recipients at last weekend’s Illinois Deer & Turkey Classic in Bloomington. The 28-point Peoria County buck Nauman shot in 2004 scored 220 5/8 inches and was the largest buck measured over the weekend. Here is Nauman’s account of killing the deer:

“On opening morning a doe and yearling came under my stand and I shot the doe. The yearling would not leave the area so I continued to sit in my stand for 20 minutes longer. When I looked out into the field where the doe and yearling had come from there was a buck standing there. Because of the hazy conditions and the tree limbs that were in my view, I couldn’t really tell how large the rack was on this buck but that it was a big buck. I took a long shot and the buck just twitched and walked away. I tried to find a blood trail in the stand of alfalfa but couldn’t.

“I thought I had a clean miss! On Sunday evening I was coming along a narrow point of woods only about 400 yards from were I saw the buck opening morning and found him dead. When I approached the deer I knew that it was the deer that my brother Joe had captured on a trail camera only three weeks earlier. We had nicknamed it ‘The Freak’ because of its rack. “