The story of the second buck starts in 2009 when my brother David filmed a tall buck with long “Y-forked” brow tines on each side. The brow tines also had a twist to them, so we started to calling him “Twister.” On opening day I sat in the rain during the afternoon, but as soon as it stopped I started to see deer movement, including Twister. He was heading out toward a soy bean field at about 28 yards. He was walking broad side in the wide open. It happened so fast I did not have time to age him or anything, I only knew he looked big in the velvet footage my brother showed me. I drew and shot, but to my surprise the fletching did not hold to the aluminum shafts. I fletched these myself and have never had this happen before. There must have been an oxidation film on the shaft or something. Anyway, as soon as I released the arrow I could see it flying straight but, it had a funny flopping spiral to it. This was the first time I had ever used white feathers and the eratic was very apparent. When the arrow went just under his heart, Twister jumped a little, but he did not spook out of there. He just walked off. After getting down, I found the arrow with only one of the 4-fletched feathers partially attached. The other three were laying on the ground up near the broadhead end. Those fletchings pealed off of there during flight and caused a lot of drag. I have since been using wraps or using arrows from Jim Rebuck. Ha!
So the next day I was in a stand about 200 yards from the first stand. In the current issue of Trad Bowhunter Mag. Dec/Jan, I have an article called “Heart Shot.” In that story I describe passing up a buck with long “Y-forked” brows. After looking at film footage over night from the deer that I missed due to poor arrow flight, I decided this buck was probably only three years old I would let him grow up a little. I passed him up the next day just before I made the heart-shot on the nice 9-point in the story.
I saw him several more times in 2009, but in 2010 he added some sticker-tines, but did not grow the double Y-forks, only his characteristic twisted brows. I had him at ten yards during 2010, but again elected to pass him up in hopes that he would ad more antler growth.
During 2011 I got an early set camera photo of him under the same old scrub apple tree that Tree-Shaker visited.