Matthew Reaves, 29
Location: Alabama, Kentucky, Florida
Gear: Ultralock Saddle, Predator Platform, One Stick, FAS Pack
To begin this story let's go back to the 2022 season. Myself and a few buddies decided to make the drive to some public land in Kentucky for the opening weekend of bow season in hopes of tagging a velvet buck. From multiple sources I was told how hard the hunting is and how the conditions tend to be very brutal with high temperature and mosquitos and ticks everywhere. I had three days to hunt with a total of six sits on this trip, I thought surely I could get it done. Everyone on youtube and TV shows makes it look easy. My thoughts were to simply find some ag fields whether it be corn or beans and hunt them and I would tag my biggest buck to date... boy was i wrong. Majority of this trip was spent dodging rain storms and other hunters. Finally on the last day I thought I had a good plan put together. Rain showers allowed for the temps to cool off and I was expecting good movement for that afternoon's hunt. I sat all evening and did not see the first deer until the last fifteen minutes of light. IT WAS A BUCK and a velvet buck at that. Bow in hand I waited and waited yet he never appeared in the shooting lane I had picked out for him. The trip ended and I was whooped. What I thought as a guy from Alabama, was that this trip I was going to have my pick at whatever I wanted to shoot and I was so wrong. Later in the season I traveled back to this piece of public and had the best unsuccessful hunt I have ever had in my life. I saw 6 bucks in one sitting and all were shooters but just out of range.
Let's jump now to the 2023 season and the preparations that I believe made this hunt successful. I had a whole season to think on how I could make this hunt better. Was it hunting different spots, making a trip in the summer to scout or moving to a whole new piece of public? Studying maps is what I live for. I do it for my job as well as for fun. So, myself and a good friend of mine studied all off-season and decided to make a late summer trip to do some scouting and hang some cameras to hopefully be successful come September. We spent one full day covering as much ground as we possibly could. That Saturday we covered 14 miles and hung 8 cameras. Found what we thought were promising areas for the September opener. Even glassed some fields and saw some really nice deer. The last evening of the trip we were just speed scouting some areas and drove to this one area for one last look before dark. What we saw amazed us. There were 3-4 giant velvet bucks in this field. With no cameras left to hang we kept this intel in the back of our heads.The next few months went slow and so was the activity on our cameras. The closer the season got the more discouraged we were. The week of our trip gets here and we have maybe one decent buck on camera. Was the scouting trip worth it or was it a waste of time? Was I really going to let camera intel dictate how I hunted an area that I knew had big bucks everywhere? No, no I was not.
September 1, 2023
Friday around lunch we begin our adventure for velvet bucks in Kentucky. Driving up a lot of ideas were in my head on where to hunt and how to hunt. We got to the public land around 5 that afternoon and I hit the woods as soon as I got there. I wanted to check the area where we saw all the big bucks but didn't hang any cameras there. Fighting ticks and mosquitos I made my way into this area to find nothing. I was finding more and more people sign as I was walking in. Soon I walked up to an area where two bucks were feeding. The pieces of the puzzle were starting to take shape. Light was fading and I wanted to get to this one field before dark. As I came around the corner I could barely see the field. I threw up my binoculars and saw the silhouette of a deer. Then another, and another. There were three bucks in the field feeding. I squinted my eyes and tried to make out what I could as light was fading. One of the bucks finally lifted his head and had a huge frame. That is all I could tell. This was now stuck in my head. Do I hunt the field in the morning, or do I try to catch him going back to bed? This would be a completely blind sit for the opener. Many many questions ran through my head. I studied my maps the whole night and finally put a plan together. Was it a shot in the dark? Yes, but I had a gut feeling that this could be a successful hunt.
September 2, 2023
That morning I woke up and was ready to go. The spot I had picked out was roughly 500 yards from where I saw this bachelor group. It was a timbered finger that had some thickets surrounding it. The forecasted wind was SE and made this set up perfect. The moon was also full making me think these deer may be a little late going back to bed and that's how I would kill one.I got to the gate at 4:15 before anyone and made my way to the area of interest. I had to walk by the exact field he was in the evening before. I knew there was potential that he could still be out there or other deer for that matter. So I made the decision to walk in without a light and walk in the moonlight. I got in the woods where I wanted to set up and did a little "scouting in the dark" and didn't like what I was finding. The area just didn't look used much. There was a little browse here and there but I wanted something that stood out. After walking around this area for 30 min I was dripping sweat and just wanted to get in a tree in the dark. I ended up walking back to where I had dropped a pin and found a tree there to climb. Once set up I waited. It hadn't been 20 min since I got set up and a deer walked right under me in the dark. This just confirmed to me that I was where I needed to be and could possibly see some more deer as the morning went on. The next hour is one I will never forget. It was a beautiful Kentucky opener, the sun was shining bright and it wasn't as hot as it normally was. About 45 min after daylight I looked across the creek and saw a tail flicker. I noticed a big body and I was ready to shoot whatever it was. With bow in hand I turned around in my saddle to make sure I had a strong side shot. Here they came. Not 1, or 2 but 3 velvet bucks were headed straight to the base of my tree. As soon as I got a clear view of the first buck I knew I was shooting him. I didn't even have to look at the others. He trotted up the ditch to me and was 15 yards before I knew it. I pulled back my Bowtech Carbon one and let it fly. With a loud crack and a mule kick I was confident that I put a good shot on him. I listened closely for the crash. There it was, he crashed roughly 75 yards from my stand. I knew that's what I heard but doubt always starts to creep in. I probably sat in that tree for two hours soaking in the morning. This was the morning that everything I have ever worked for finally came together. Every second was going to be remembered and I can still see it clearly in my mind today. Some of my closest friends met me at the truck to help with the recovery. I was confident he was laying not far but then again I was worried that he got away like a lot of deer in the past. We found good blood and more blood and then he went into a CRP field. There was barely any blood to be found. A few specs started to appear and we followed that. Soon I was telling my friends that I did not feel good about the blood trail. The next words out of my mouth were "There he is!" We exploded in excitement. I had no idea what I was going to walk up on. I just knew it was going to be my best buck, and in velvet on top of that. Little did i know that when i walked up on him he would be full velvet with a DROPTINE! This blew my mind and made all the hard work worth it. After hunting public land in multiple states for multiple seasons I finally connected with the caliber buck that I had always dreamed of.
