164-Inch Velvet Buck Creates a Shooting Dilemma for Kentucky Couple

Logan Beach of Bowling Green, Kentucky, and his wife, Kaylin, had a problem. It was the afternoon of September 6, the second day of Kentucky’s archery season. The couple was hunting the same ridge from different trees 16 yards apart, Kaylin with her recurve and Logan with a Prime Divide 31 compound bow. They were close enough to see each other, but not close enough to talk. They were hunting specific deer when a massive nomadic buck they weren’t expecting walked nine yards between their stands.

Unfortunately, they hadn’t discussed who got the shot on this one. The buck wasn’t a complete stranger to Logan. He had one close encounter with it last November at eight yards on the ground. His trail cameras picked it up sporadically since then, and neighbors as far as two miles away shared trail camera photos of the buck as well.

“He’s super nomadic for a whitetail,” Logan told MeatEater. “He wasn’t sure where he fit in. He just knew he needed to move around.”

Logan only picked up the buck twice this year on his trail cameras. The first picture came in on August 8 in the middle of the day. The second at 1 a.m., 16 days before he waltzed between the couple’s treestands. This wasn’t a buck Logan or Kaylin had on their radar. But, shortly after 6:30 p.m., Logan heard a sneeze from down the ridge that changed those initial plans. He scanned the direction of the sneeze and saw a little six-pointer. Then he saw the nomadic buck following behind him.

One of the few pictures Logan had of the deer on camera.

“I caught a glimpse of him, just the main frame, and I thought, ‘That’s a decent deer,’” Logan said. As the deer came closer, he recognized the buck from the trail cameras. “My first thought was, ‘I can’t believe he’s here,’ Logan said. “My second thought was that we didn’t have a plan for who’s shooting this one.”

The buck fed up the ridge, traveling with two smaller bucks, a four-pointer and the sneezing six-pointer. The Beachs were hunting a crosswind, and the trio was coming straight for their treestands. The big buck got within a few feet of picking up their scent before stopping. He pulled up nine yards between the hunters, but on both their weak sides, so neither could get a clean shot. It waited there for a few minutes, unaware of how much marital trouble he was causing, before heading toward a pile of corn.

That’s when Logan started trying to figure out what Kaylin was thinking. From his tree, the buck was wide open, but his wife hadn’t taken a shot. “She hadn’t shot, so maybe she’s thinking I’m going to shoot,” Logan said. He drew on the buck while it fed on the corn pile, but he let down when it turned to face him. He drew a second time when the buck turned broadside at 30 yards, but hesitated, wondering if Kaylin might still shoot.

“I drew back and anchored in and kind of waited 10 or 15 seconds,” he said. “Then I was like, I can’t let him sit here no more.” He settled his pin and released, sending a G5 Mega Meat broadhead straight through both lungs.

“He didn’t jump or buck or anything,” Logan said. “It was right there in the money.” He watched as the buck ran about 25 yards and then piled up. “We were both ecstatic,” Logan said. “Both our trees were wiggling. We were air high-fiving and everything.”

Once the excitement calmed down a little, Logan climbed down and walked over to Kaylin’s tree. His wife had a few things to say to her husband.

“The first thing she said was, ‘That deer’s a lot bigger than you think he is,’” Then she asked a question Logan wasn’t expecting. “You couldn’t have given me one more step?”

“I thought you couldn’t shoot,” Logan told his wife. “From my angle, it didn’t look like you were doing much.” But Kaylin had her camera running the whole time, and footage wasn’t exactly going to help Logan’s case.

Kaylin likes to shoot her recurve at 18 yards or closer. The buck had been standing just 22 yards from Kaylin’s stand. But just before Logan released his arrow, it had stepped right into her shooting lane. The video from Kaylin’s camera shows her raising her bow and putting tension on the string. “Then you see a lighted nock come from somewhere in outer space and tear up the party,” Logan said.

The Beach's didn't realize how much mass the buck had until they found it.

When the couple first approached Logan’s velvet buck, they immediately noticed the buck’s mass, which looked like a “cactus.” The buck’s rack wasn’t particularly wide, but he had 42 2/8 inches of mass and 22 scorable points. It grossed 164 1/8 inches in Buckmasters scoring. Fortunately for Logan, Kaylin has been a good sport about the whole thing.

“She was excited for me,” Logan said. “There hasn’t been any couch sleeping or divorce papers or anything.”

Photos courtesy of Logan Beach.

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