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Bowhunting Illinois Bucks with the TenPoint Crossbow

By Bow StaffOctober 10, 20171 Comment
BHOD prostaffer, Clinton Fawcett, took his son, Avery, out this past weekend for some quality time in the deer blind. They were hunting a spot that has consistently produced some great bucks, but neither of the guys were expecting things to turn out like they did for Avery’s first hunt of the year.
Clinton shares the story here…
I guess we can start the story back in the summer of 2013. That was the year that I first starting getting pictures of a buck we assumed to be a 3-year old. Truthfully, I never really paid a whole lot of attention to him. He just didn’t have anything that really stood out to me and was relatively small for a 3-year old.
clinton-velvet-buck

2013 was the year we first began to track this deer.

Over the next three seasons, I continued to get lots of pictures of him. There was always two things that stood out about this deer. First, he was only on the farm between August 14th and October 14th. I never had a pic any earlier or any later. Second, he never grew much of a rack . He was, in my opinion, a solid 140-ish deer. We never tried to hunt him. I wasn’t that interested in him, plus we had to have an east wind to get in there, and he was usually MIA by the time that happened.
This year he showed up a little later than usual, not arriving until early September.  I still was hesitant on whether we would be able to hunt him, and truthfully, once I saw the pics of him, I thought he was the normal 145. We have a couple giants to hunt, so I was hesitant on what to do knowing that it was going to be early or never on this deer.
clinton-buck-on-stealth-cam

Trail cam pix never seemed to do this buck justice.

My 10-year old son, Avery, has started to take more interest in hunting with me, especially with the filming. So with my filming partner, Frank, being busy working nights, Avery and I decided we were going to hunt Saturday and Sunday nights as the weather conditions were looking pretty good. Saturday night’s hunt ended with no buck sightings. We only saw a few does. We went to church Sunday morning. Afterwards, I checked the weather, and it showed an East/Southeast wind, so I immediately knew where we were going.  It was sunny, and the pressure was rising around 29.8. I knew it should be good.  We were in the blind, set up and ready by 5:30, which is later than I like, but I always try to make short sits with the kids.  We started seeing deer at 6 pm. A few small bucks and a doe ate around in the clover for a while. Avery watched them and made sure that I knew he wasn’t shooting anything unless it was a big mature deer.  I kind of laughed to myself and said, “We will see.” A few minutes later we had a nice 100-inch, 8-pointer walk out, and he never picked up the bow which surprised me.
The next time I looked up, I couldn’t believe my eyes. There was a really big deer in the Heartland clover and he was coming right at us. While Avery was getting ready, I was studying the buck  in the camera. I immediately  realized that I had grossly underestimated this deer. He had a giant body and the mass to match it.
I kept filming and coaching Avery as the buck got closer. He chased a little buck off and stopped to feed right in front of us. Avery was settled in and made a great 25-yard shot, and the rest is history. The reactions, as you can imagine, are priceless. The gutted deer weighed 220 pounds,  scored 162 5/8, and had 6 1/4 inch bases.
“It was crazy! I can’t believe I killed one that big. I was scared, happy, amazed, and surprised. Thank you to my dad for taking me, Grandma and Grandpa Jones for getting to hunt the farm, and Uncle Ty, Uncle Isaac, and my cousin, Nic, for helping me find the deer.”
Avery Fawcett
You’ll have to watch the rest on an upcoming episode of Bowhunt or Die.
Avery was shooting the TenPoint Turbo GT crossbow. I really like the fact that it’s small and compact, allowing for easily handling with kids and great maneuverability in the ground blind or treestand. It’s also got a ton of power, and it’s really easy to load, especially with the ACUdraw cocking system.
avery-fawcett-buck

Father/Son smiles for big bucks in Illinois.

Gear List

Food Plot: Heartland Rack Maker Plus clover plot, planted July 25th.
Crossbow: TenPoint Turbo GT Crossbow
Arrows: Black Eagle
Broadhead: NAP Spitfire xxx
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