#WHYISPYPOINT - A Buck for Grandpa

Scotty Goodwin patterns, then tags, a buck of a lifetime

Buck: 162 inches

Date Harvested: Sept. 28, 2020

Location: Lake County, Indiana

Weapon: Mathews Traverse

Scotty Goodwin is a diehard deer hunter from Indiana. He grew up hunting with family and friends, especially his grandfather. He’s no stranger to this way of life, and his recent pursuit of a giant 8 ½-year-old deer came to a happy ending. It wasn’t a short journey, though.

He has many trail camera photos from past seasons. Goodwin has also had numerous encounters dating back to 2017. That year, the buck got the pass. In 2018, he missed the deer with his bow. Goodwin chalked up two more close encounters in 2019. It almost seemed that it wasn’t meant to be.

Enter 2020.

Goodwin knew of this buck’s particular habits. He liked to bed in certain areas with north and south winds, for example.

Deer season loomed, and Goodwin was consumed with thoughts of this giant. It had a relatively small home range. All things considered, he felt this buck was most predictable (and killable) on a northwestern wind. So, on Sept. 28, he moved in for the kill.

The conditions were shaping up to be almost identical to the day Goodwin missed the deer in 2018. So, around lunchtime, he walked to the very same stand location in hopes of a repeat.

He settled in, and the temperatures dropped quickly. The wind blew out of the northwest, and after a full day of rain, the barometric pressure was on the move. The precipitation ceased just as he made it to the tree.

Full of anticipation, he started glassing his surroundings for movement. Set up on the edge of a crop field along a natural pinch point, it was the perfect area to camp out on an early season buck.

A finger of woods towered in front of the stand. A river bottom and low-lying grasses sprawled to the right. A cornfield stretched out to the left.

Despite his excitement, the action started out pretty slow. The only sounds were drops of water falling from the canopy around him, and squirrels darting from limb to limb.

“As the evening set in, things started picking up,” Goodwin says. “A small yearling and two other small bucks came down the edge of the cornfield between it and my stand. With 30 minutes of shooting light [remaining], I looked to my left to see a corn stalk moving, and to my surprise, I saw his antlers.”

The deer slowly eased down the edge of the corn toward Goodwin’s stand location. It slowly fed on ears of corn as it went.

Finally, the deer offered a 35-yard shot opportunity, and he took it. The buck ran directly toward him, and crashed in the timber just five steps from the base of the tree.

“It was probably my deer of a lifetime,” Goodwin says. “To have this much history, and to have it come full circle with all the hunting pressure around me, I feel like it was just meant to be.”

But there was more.

“My grandfather was an avid deer hunter, and the last time we talked, he was holding the sheds of this buck from 2019,” Goodwin says. “On March 13, my grandfather told me, ‘You will harvest that big buck this year. Just pick the right days and hunt him smart. Hunt his wind, and get him before he gets you.’ I am pretty sure he was with me on the evening it all came together.”

Tactical Talk

Knowing how sensitive this buck was to hunting pressure, Goodwin decided to leave the buck’s bedding area alone as a sanctuary. Until Sept. 28, he hadn’t come close to that area since February. With significant pressure on surrounding tracts, that encouraged the deer to spend more time where Goodwin had access to.

According to him, trail cameras played an integral role in the pursuit of this deer. Due to in-person sightings and trail camera photos, he knew the buck favored the area on northwestern winds. Such conditions allowed the deer to move — and feed — with the wind in its favor. Goodwin took a chance by hunting a just-off wind, and it worked.

“It really helped me nail down his patterns over the years, and to pinpoint his travel corridors,” Goodwin says. “This deer was seldom predictable, but I just needed to be right this one time. SPYPOINT cameras definitely helped me nail down when he started moving in his core area in daylight.”