Veteran bowhunter Gerad Dowty has taken countless deer over the years, many of them with close friends and family. And a buck he first saw in January is one he would’ve liked all of his hunting buddies to see.
“I saw the buck briefly twice in January running with a big six-by-six buck,” Dowty tells Outdoor Life. “Then my daughter called me while she was driving this summer and told me about seeing the buck. I put some trail cameras up near there, and started getting photos of him in velvet, still hanging with the six-by-six buck.”
Once the deer cleaned off their velvet, the two bucks separated. But Dowty was still able to keep track of one of the giants on some private land where he hunts in Oklahoma’s south-central Washita County.
“He had a 30- or 40-inch bigger rack this year compared to last year,” says Dowty, a 48-year-old oil-field worker from Erick, Oklahoma. “He was living in big white oak creek bottom draws near CRP fields. I was getting some good trail cam photos of him every few days, and I started hunting him hard beginning October first.”
Dowty says the deer stayed on the private tract where he had permission to hunt, but he believes it began going nocturnal in October.
“I’d get pictures of him right at dark, and I actually saw him across a big grass field on October twenty first, the evening before I shot him. I saw him jump a fence and enter a creek draw about 500 yards from where I was hunting.”
Against his better judgement, Dowty decided to change things up. He would hunt the buck from the ground with his Mission crossbow. Although most of Dowty’s deer have been taken with a recurve or compound, he had to give up vertical bows because of shoulder problems. He also had kidney surgery in September and moves a little slower these days.
“That afternoon I got along the fence line where he jumped the evening before,” Dowty says. “I settled into some tall grass that afternoon and waited.”
He says the area is loaded with wild hogs. He was regularly spooking pigs away from him while watching for the buck by the fence.
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“I softly yell at the pigs to get them away, not trying to spook any nearby deer,” he explains. “Finally, I turned and there was the buck standing broadside to me at 25 yards. I think he’d been bedded in the grass near me the whole time the pigs were around. But when the evening cool settled in and it got quiet, he stood up, and that’s when I spotted him.”
Dowty raised his crossbow and settled the crosshairs behind the buck’s chest. The deer ran 45 yards toward a creek and disappeared.
Dowty checked the spot where the buck stood, and the blood trail was huge. He walked right to the deer where it had entered the creek draw. After going back for an ATV, he hauled the buck out to dress and skin it at a nearby cabin.
Dowty estimates the 18-point buck had a field dressed weight over 200 pounds and was around 6.5 years old. He hesitates to give a green score of the buck, but he thinks it could score in the ballpark of 200 inches.
“We won’t know what the actual score is until after the sixty-day drying period,” he says. “It’s by far the best buck I’ve ever taken with [any kind of] bow, and I have over thirty of them mounted.”
Dowty will have a pedestal mount made of the buck, using an old wooden fence post in the display to remind him of the fence line where he shot the deer.
“After I shot that buck, I just sat there looking at him and thinking of my late father and all the other great friends and bowhunting buddies who aren’t around today,” Dowty says. “I sure would have loved for them to see that buck.”
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