Matthew Kufahl, 46, of Hayward, Wisconsin, killed an impressive Booner buck last season. After tagging a 181-inch 12-pointer on November 12, he figured he could sit back and relax for the rest of the season. Five days later, he checked his trail cameras and found pictures of an even bigger buck.
“I was like, oh, I didn’t kill the biggest deer up here,” Kufahl told MeatEater.
Kufahl was running trail cameras in three counties and had never seen this buck before. Ten days later, it showed up again. Kufahl decided his season wasn’t over after all.
“I had a gun tag,” Kufahl said. “I decided that was the only deer I was going to hunt. If I found him during gun season, I was going to hunt him.”
Kufahl spent the next several weeks relocating cameras, trying to find the big buck’s core area. Then two days after the season closed, he had it. The buck showed up in the same spot for three days in a row and made several daylight appearances. That’s when Kufahl moved all of his cameras into the area, just to keep an eye on him in the off-season. The buck even dropped his sheds right next to one of his cameras. Kufahl has those sheds from last year, which he estimates would have scored around 188 inches. Kufahl’s target buck disappeared for much of the summer, only showing up on camera about once a month. It was enough for Kufahl to track antler growth. But people in the area were already talking. Hunters were swapping stories about the buck at the local bar and flashing their own pictures of him.
“I figured there would be people crawling all over there this year. They know he’s big,” Kufahl said.
But Kufahl already knew roughly where the big buck was bedding, and he had a plan. Unfortunately, the wind didn’t cooperate with that plan. On opening day, September 12, the wind was coming out of the northwest, blowing almost directly from Kufahl’s stand to the buck’s bedroom.
“But I thought I could beat him,” Kufahl said. “I got in there and I sat and didn’t see anything.”
When the buck disappeared from his cameras for three days after that first sit, Kufahl figured he blew it. Rain kept the deer from moving much on Monday, Sept. 14, but Kufahl figured they would be up and moving again following the storm. They did. The big buck turned up on his trail cameras again on Tuesday evening, but Kufahl was at his daughter’s volleyball game and not in the woods.
Wednesday’s forecast called for more rain after dark, so Kufahl hit the woods early. He figured the deer would move before the front, so he slipped into the woods early in the afternoon.
“It was dead calm that day,” Kufahl said. “I know big bucks usually don’t like the dead calm. They like a little bit of breeze to move. But I knew it was early season, and anything could happen.”
And it did. Right at dusk, just as Kufahl was about to throw in the towel for the day, he heard footsteps. They sounded really close. He slolwy cut his eyes toward the sound and saw his target buck standing in bow range and staring right at him. The buck snuck in and Kufahl never heard him coming.
“I was like, holy smokes!” Kufahl said. “Stay calm. Just don’t look at his rack.”
The buck finally took a step, putting a big oak tree between the two of them. Kufahl took that opportunity to draw his Mathews Helon 6. When the buck stepped out on the other side of that oak, it was almost broadside, quartering slightly toward him. Kufahl released, sending a Carbon Express arrow tipped with a QAD Exodus broadhead right in front of the buck’s shoulder. It pierced the animal’s heart on its way out the other side.
Kufahl knew the shot was good, but the buck ran toward private land after the shot. He didn’t want to bump the buck, so he collected his gear, headed back to his truck, and called a buddy for help. It was almost 9 p.m. when the two returned to the area to look for it. Luckily, it didn’t take them long to find him.
“I had my little flashlight, and it was getting kind of hard to see, so my buddy turned on his floodlight,” Kufahl said. “It looked like a blood bath going over the hill.”
When they crested the hill, Kufahl’s buddy spotted the buck first.
“He was piled up on the edge of the brush, and there was just this massive rack sticking up.”
They managed to snap a few photos with their cellphones before the rain started pouring. Kufahl knew he had a big buck on his hands, but he wasn’t fully prepared for just how big.
“He was probably 10 inches bigger than I thought he was,” Kufahl said. “The spread is 22 ¾ inches inside. Last year he was a perfect 12. This year, he was 11. If he had matching G5s like he did last year, he probably would have pushed 200 inches.”
Kufahl has a shoulder mount planned for the buck, but with his taxidermist on an elk hunt, he had to scramble to find a freezer big enough to hold the rack until he gets back.
“He called around and found somebody with a big chest freezer that was empty,” Kufahl said. “I drove it down there on Friday and put it in there.”
Luckily, that was the hardest track job of this hunt for Kufahl.
Photos courtesy of Matthew Kufahl.
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