After spending two summers watching a buck transform from a promising 8-point into a Tennessee giant, Justin Curtis knew this deer would be worth the wait. What he didn’t expect was just how nerve-wracking—and ultimately rewarding—the hunt would be.
“I swore I’d never do another velvet hunt again,” Curtis admits. “I hate the heat and ticks. But when he started shifting his pattern early, I knew it was now or never.”
Curtis had put in the work. He planted beans and clover, added sorghum and sunflowers for bedding cover, and cut trails through the woods for quiet stand access. The planning paid off. On the morning of the hunt, Curtis spotted the buck slipping along the edge of a clover plot at first light.
“As soon as he turned and I saw that 22-inch spread, I knew it was him,” Curtis says. The buck paused at 35 yards. Curtis steadied his shot, watched the lighted nock fly, and heard the telltale thump. But what came next nearly unraveled the morning.
“I couldn’t see the nock. I couldn’t see the deer. No blood, no sign. I was second-guessing everything,” he says.
After searching for two hours and calling in a tracking dog, the buck was finally found just seven yards inside the tree-line—completely hidden in the thick stuff. Curtis had made a clean pass-through with no blood trail.
“When I walked up and put hands on him, I realized he was way bigger than I thought,” he says.
The main beams taped at 25 and 23 inches, with an inside spread of 22. The left side alone totaled 87 inches. The final rough green score came in at a massive 179 inches—well worth the years of passing on other deer.
