“This ol boy was taunting me on camera weeks before opening day,” Matthew Overlock wrote.
The Troy hunter saw the buck on opening day at about 28 yards, but thick cover kept him from getting a clear shot. The deer noticed him in his tree stand and walked away.
On his third hunt, he was sitting on the ground when the buck came within about 20 yards. When it looked up and saw him, he took the shot with his crossbow.
The buck ran only 20 to 30 yards before Overlock found it. He tagged it the next morning, when it weighed 199.5 pounds.
It was his first archery deer and his biggest buck yet.