It was late in the afternoon on Oct. 14, and Randy Baker was sharing an elevated blind with his good friend Jerid Mills, who’d traveled there from Iowa. They looked out over the rolling hills of Baker’s 250-acre farm in Southeast Minnesota. For the last 10 years, Baker, a financial advisor from Rochester, has been managing the property specifically for whitetail deer.
“The fun part is preparing the land with food plots and travel corridors, clearing spots and making a place a big-buck haven,” Baker tells Outdoor Life.
He says there were two bucks in particular that lived on the piece that he and Mills had their eye on. They’d also brought a video camera to film the hunt for an episode of Driven Hunter.
“We’d been checking trail cameras regularly and we had two giant bucks that we wanted,” Baker explains. “We had several years of pictures of the bucks and our blind was set in a hot spot at the bottom of a ridge, near a food plot with a corn patch and pond nearby.”
Mills’ target buck is the one they believed was most likely to show that afternoon. So Jerid held his bow, while Baker sat ready with the camera.
Early in their hunt, a doe strolled in close behind their blind and from a downwind direction. She caught their scent and blew, and for a while Baker thought their hunt was over.
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“But a couple hours later another doe showed at the top of a hill, and she came right down to the food plot. As she got closer, she started bobbing her head and staring at something,” Baker explains. “I knew from her body language she was looking at something behind us. A few seconds later, my target buck stepped out into the food plot.”
Baker quickly handed the camera to Mills, who was already setting his bow down. Baker then picked up his own bow while Mills quietly opened a window so Baker could have a shot at the giant 12-pointer standing broadside below them.
“I don’t know how Jerid did it, but he worked the camera one-handed, while I ranged the deer at 27 yards, drew my bow and made the shot,”. Baker recalls. “Jerid got the whole thing on camera. A slow-motion video of the arrow in flight to the buck is now posted on YouTube.”
Baker’s arrow hit the buck perfectly behind its shoulder. The deer raced off but only traveled 70 yards before falling. He’d used a Mathews V3X compound bow set at 70-pounds, and a NAP “Kill Zone” expandable broadhead. They retrieved the buck with an ATV and got to the business of field-dressing it and measuring its antlers. While they didn’t weigh the deer, Baker says he’s certain it weighed over 200 pounds.
They gave the typical 12-point a green gross score of 175 inches. Baker says he doesn’t plan to enter the buck into any record books, but he will have it mounted as he waits for next season to roll around.
“It’s like excitedly anticipating Christmas for weeks. And when Christmas comes and goes, there’s kind of a void in you,” he says. “But there’s always next year’s hunting season, which keeps all of us charged up.”
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