Trevor Messinger

Harvest Story: After watching this buck all summer and deeming him my #2 hitlist season started off great with a cold from moving in just days after season started, I had pictures of this buck in my standing bean foodplot every night and was confident he would move, he shows up a good hour before dark and strolls into my field like he owned the place, as he enter my shooting lane I focused my camera and settled my 40 yard pin on him and let the arrow fly, it was a very calm night and you could hear a pin drop and that he did, he hit the dirt so hard my arrow nearly went over the top of him but it didnt. It went into him right above the spine and exited into the opposite shoulder, at this point I was still confident it was a good shot untill watching the footage back, I decided to give him a good 5 hours before tracking, he ran into a standing corn field and went around 300 yards untill we jumped him from his bed. Confident he would be dead in the morning I had my buddy bring his dog and we started the track, we tracked him around 2.5 miles all the while never bedding or bleeding again I was sick to my stomach knowing I messed up on such a beautiful deer. My tracker was confident that he would be fine and it was a so call “back wack” every day for weeks I keep hoping he shows up on one of my 30 cell cams in that block but nothing and I was convinced he was dead. Fast forward to the night of the 28th im laying in my tent in Colorado checking camera pics at 2 am when I see him, I yelled to my buddies sleeping hes alive! They are like whattt?? The buck I shot hes back I exclaimed! So from the moment I got back I played a game of cat and mouse with this buck from showing up at stand I hunted the day before to showing up under my stand as im on the way to hunt him. Finally on Wednesday the 11th he comes out chasing a doe and I was able to sneak another arrow into him ending his fate in the same field where it all began 33 days earlier!