Parrish Brown’s bucks

Parrish Brown was all set to shoot a nice 8-pointer.

Then a loud grunt made him change his mind. The grunt came from another buck that Goodfield hunter Brown realized was behind him. Better yet, the two bucks were actually staring at each other with Brown in the middle of the staredown.

As a result, he was not able to get a good look at the beautiful 20-point behind him until the 8-pointer finally walked off. Only then did he slowly turn to see an impressive rack. And over time, the buck came closer, finally moving into a clearing 20 yards away when Brown released his arrow.

The deer Brown called “the buck of my lifetime” wound up going down only 30 yards from his stand.

Thanks to that deer Brown made the most of a limited season of hunting in 2006. Brown had not been able to get out as much that year because he was training for a triathlon. And on his fateful hunt on Nov. 12, 2006, it took urging from his father before Brown finally went out for an afternoon hunt at his 300-acre spot in Fulton County.

The trip was well worth his time.

The Fulton County bruiser had a gross non-typical score of 224 6/8 inches and a net non-typical score of 217 3/8 inches. Brown’s buck wound up as the largest non-typical bow kill at the Illinois Deer & Turkey Classic held in March of 2007.

The big buck was not Brown’s first, though.

The picture above is of an 11-pointer Brown shot during on the second day of the first shotgun season of 2001. He had actually seen the deer prior to gun season while returning from a bow hunt.

“I decided I would hunt a small little patch of woods just down the road from were I saw him. Around 7 a.m. on that morning a doe came walking in, she had stopped and looked back behind her,” Brown said. “I looked in that direction and saw the buck coming in hot on her trail, a few seconds later I was able to put him down with a nice shot.”

The buck (also pictured below) scored 165 2/8 net and dressed out at 222 pounds.

And Brown had another nice bowkill on Oct. 28, 1993. That first trophy whitetail is pictured below and netted 139 7/8 inches and field dressed at 240 pounds.

“I set up my climbing tree stand in an area of fresh scrapes that afternoon and about 3 p.m. the buck came in to check the scrapes. The only good shot I had was when the buck approached his last scrape. It was a nice broadside shot, but was around 35 yards—the maximum I like to shoot,” Brown said. “I placed my pin on top of his back just behind the shoulder and drilled him right through the vitals. He ran just over 100 yards when I found him.”