2011 - “Big Boy down! Big Boy down!”

November 29, 2011 • Voyageur Press

Dan, his dad, Dave and his three brothers, Steven, Joe and Mike are all hunters. They have some land near McGregor that they manage the health of the deer on. There’s been some logging going on there and they’ve had food plots and mineral licks and a trail cam. On June 8, they saw a picture on the trail cam of a pretty good looking buck, “The great thing about the trail cam is you can watch them grow,” remarks Dan. So as the days went by, they saw the rack on this deer getting bigger and bigger, and they started dreaming of deer season. They also saw quite a few other deer, explained Dan, “Definite shooters, some does and some spike bucks.”

Then around mid-August they stopped seeing any deer at all. There were quite a few Timberwolves reported in the area lately, so the Winegars were wondering if the big buck was gone.

While Dan was thinking about whether there’d be any deer around this hunting season, he was also thinking about his first year with his grandpa’s gun. Dan used to hunt with a 270 Ruger bolt action. A spring went bad and had been giving him trouble. “I kept meaning to get it fixed, but then when my grandpa passed away last May, my aunt and uncle told me that since my gun wasn’t working and I used to hunt with Grandpa,” Dan said emotionally, “I should have his gun.” So Dan was given his Browning semi-automatic with a Nikon 3x9 scope.

Dan, who currently resides in the cities, came up hunting on opening weekend. “It’s so great that I can come up and just hunt,” says Dan. “My dad does all the work of getting stands up and all that.” On Saturday, Dave, Steven, Joe and Dan were all hunting. “It was windy, windy, windy!” laments Dan. “It wasn’t that cold, but being out with that wind blowing on you all day gets pretty miserable.” To make it even worse, none of them saw anything worth shooting at all day.

Not to give up, they headed out again on Sunday and had better luck. Steven shot a basket 7, they cleaned it and then took a break from the wind by watching a little football. After getting discouraged by the Vikings, Dan, Mike and Dave decided to go out again. Dan wanted to avoid the wind though, so he decided to go into a stand his dad had built and had called the “Garden Stand.” He had built it as a place to keep his yard tools and Dan had suggested that as long as he was building something, make it something you can shoot deer out of too. So it was a nice enclosed space that protected him from the wind and he could look over the whole field.

It was around 2:30 or 3:00 that Dan heard a single shot, then got a text from his dad saying that he shot at the big buck, but he wasn’t sure if he nicked him or not. So Dan started walking toward him as Mike and Dave tried to track him. Mike and Dave saw a drop of blood every 20 yards or so, but when they got to Dan about 20 minutes later, they still hadn’t seen the deer. So they decided it was just a nick and they weren’t going to find him. Mike decided he was done hunting and was going to head home, but Dave and Dan both went back to their stands.

Dan decided that he should see how far it was across the field he was looking out on, so he got out his Leupold RX2 range finder and tried to measure, but it would not work. “I worked on that thing for 20 minutes and couldn’t get it to work,” describes Dan. “I finally just shook it with frustration and it started to work. So I scanned to the right of a popple tree across the field and it showed 357. So I knew if I was going to shoot out there I would have to sight it high, when I sighted my gun before the season I was an inch low and to the right.”

It wasn’t long after that Dan looked out about the same spot he had just scanned and all he sees is rack. “That’s the Big Boy!” he thought. It was just hanging out with a doe, so Dan picked up his grandpa’s gun. “It looked like a circus act. I was shaking so hard!” admits Dan. But then the buck took a step back and was looking into the woods. There was no way Dan could shoot it even if he wasn’t shaking. He texted to his dad and brothers, “Big Boy’s on the field...waiting for a shot.” Then suddenly he was gone. 

About 5:05, suddenly Big Boy charges out. “I was done shaking, I put the gun up and squeezed it off and I saw him hunch, then he went into a full all-out sprint. On the second shot he wobbled like a tailback getting hit by a linebacker. Then the third shot I missed.” Dan was going to have to move quickly because the deer was running fast and soon was going to be in line with a house, “No deer is worth that.” But then, about 30 yards before the house, he stopped. This was Dan’s chance, “I shot and he tipped over, his legs came straight out and up.” He texted his dad and his brothers, “Big Boy down...Big Boy down” Joe got so excited that he jumped out of his tree, although there wasn’t anything he could do because he was 40 or 50 miles away.

“I just grabbed everything in my arms and started across the field,” says Dan. He was about 150 yards out when Joe texted him to be sure to make sure it was dead and didn’t get up and run off again. So now, in his armful of stuff, Dan was trying to find a shell and couldn’t find one. After what seemed like an eternity,  he found one and loaded his gun. He walked up and poked the deer and it was dead. 

“The first shot that made him hunch was the kill shot, I had shot him in the liver. If I wouldn’t have shot him again, he would have died, but he probably would have made it to the woods and it’s tough to say if we would’ve found him.” He was shot in two other places, one in the lower neck and one in the back leg, Dan figures Dave did one of those shots earlier and he did the other to bring him down. 



Dan is grateful to his dad for all the work he does to maintain the hunting land and stands so that he can come up and hunt. As far as how he managed to shoot the big one at 350 yards, “Grandpa helped me,” Dan concluded.