Vern Evans
As a supply-chain analyst, Ethan Bruce is accustomed to creating detailed spread sheets to better process piles of data. So it wasn’t a stretch to put one together to help pattern the Indiana buck he’d been chasing for two years.
“I had so much information about the deer that it made sense for me to do a spread sheet about him,” Bruce, 30, tells Outdoor Life. “I do it all the time [for work] and it really helped in learning all about that buck.”
Every time he saw the buck in person or on camera, Bruce noted the wind direction, temperature, moon phase, barometric pressure, time, and location, among other details. As he gathered more and more data, a pattern began to emerge.
Bruce, who lives in Indianapolis, has hunted the same farm in north-central Illinois for years. In 2023 he noticed a nice buck that he named Tall Tines for its 7-inch browtines. The buck was roughly 150 inches at the time, and Bruce was hunting it hard.
“Then all of sudden in a trail cam photo in late November [last year] he had half his rack broken off,” says Bruce. “I figured he’d been fighting another buck and lost most of one antler.”
So the hunter backed off, hoping the buck would survive until the following season. And sure enough, by November 2024 the buck was back on camera and bigger than ever. He’d grown a few more points, added mass, and looked to be in the 180-class.
“He was very active on our farm. I saw him the last two weekends of the gun season. But I just couldn’t get a good shot at him.”
Bruce knew he was bedding in a patch of Christmas trees, an area that was surrounded by CRP grass and food plots. The rifle season ended on Dec. 1 so, on Dec. 7, Bruce climbed into a ground blind with a crossbow.
“It was bitter cold, in the low 20s, and I needed to use a heater in the blind,” Bruce says. “After daylight I saw 10 to 15 does, but no bucks.”
Bruce usually leaves his sits at 10 a.m., but on this day, he decided to wait another 30 minutes. At 9:55 — when he’d normally be packing up — Tall Tines appeared.
“He just stepped out of [the Christmas trees], came toward me, and turned broadside at 30 yards. I put the crossbow on him and shot.”
The arrow hit a bit farther back than Bruce wanted, but it still looked like a lethal shot. The buck spun and ran back into the stand of evergreens.
“I was freaking out and called my dad telling him I’d shot Tall Tines. While I’m talking to him, and he’s trying to calm me down, I saw the buck walk slowly out of the Christmas trees in the opposite direction, and disappear.”
Bruce found his bloody arrow, then left the area and walked to a barn to wait for his dad before tracking the deer.
Two hours later, the father-son team picked up the trail. They found good blood for 50 yards, then it got thin and patchy. They trailed the buck toward a valley with a a creek running through it, then decided to back out.
They returned the next morning with buddies Max Polak and Joe Eckerman. They took up the blood trail and followed it into the valley and across the creek. A hundred yards beyond it, Polak spotted the buck piled up. Bruce was right: It had been a liver shot. The deer had traveled 500 yards.
“I’m glad we didn’t push him that afternoon,” says Bruce.
The buck has 16 scorable points and has been green scored by two different scorers at 184 inches gross. He estimates the deer, which was lean from the rut, was at least 4 years old.
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Although an experienced bowhunter with at least one Pope & Young buck to his credit, this is Bruce’s biggest buck to date. He plans to hang the shoulder mount in his bedroom.
“That’s where I can see him every day.”
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