When Greg finally got down, he found his arrow, and then went over to the dead buck. “It was awesome,” he said. “It was the biggest high I’ve ever had.”

Greg Meyer’s Carter County buck had 18 points. Here’s the tale of the tape.

• Inside spread: 17 inches.

• Main beams: right, 21 6/8 inches; left: 24 inches.

• Total inches of abnormal points: 19 2/8 inches.

• Total deductions: 7 2/8 inches.

• Net scores: typical, 150 4/8 inches; non-typical, 169 6/8 inches.

“When Dad came down to see the buck, he saw my friend Danny and I standing there, and I grabbed the rack and lifted it up,” Greg said. “I think he was as excited as I was to see it. Dad took all of my pictures around town and really bragged my buck up. My first deer I ever shot, I was with him -- and now, the biggest buck I’ve ever killed in my life was with him too. That makes it extra-special for me.”

FRANKLIN COUNTY
Shawn Hoerstkamp of New Haven is a Missouri State University student who loves to hunt whitetails. He’s been deer hunting for the past 10 years, during which he’s taken a total of six deer by rifle or bow.

Hoerstkamp’s family owns 125 acres in Franklin County. About 80 acres of that is in fields, and 45 acres are covered in hardwoods, some of that logged about 10 years ago and now in regeneration. About 25 acres of the fields are in beans or corn; a half-acre food plot of clover/milo is also on the tract.

Franklin is one of the counties in Missouri’s pilot antler-point restriction program. According to Hoerstkamp, the program has been paying big dividends for his family. “I really like the 4-points-or-better-on-one-side rule,” he said. “Two years ago, the biggest buck I saw was a decent 6-pointer. Now, I shot a big buck this year and missed another. Dad shot a 120-inch 8-pointer, and my brother saw a good buck out of my stand too.” He was quick to point out that he even passed up three different bucks that were in the 120 class this year.

Hoerstkamp hunted from a stand on a food plot on the neighbor’s farm on the morning of Sept. 23, 2006, but saw nothing except two deer as he walked out of the woods. He went back for an afternoon hunt at about 3:45 p.m., this time hunting from his hang-on stand along the food plot on his own family’s farm. A front was pushing through that afternoon; temperatures dropped from the 70s down into the 60s.

At first, Shawn heard some turkeys behind him, but he saw nothing -- until about 7 p.m., when he caught a glimpse of a deer moving through the field in front of him, which was just past the food plot he was hunting. Shawn stood up and grabbed his bow, just in case the deer approached closer.

As he watched the distant deer, a small 4-point buck slipped into the food plot from behind his stand. The little buck, in full velvet, began eating the lush clover. Shawn gripped his bow a little tighter at the thought of something bigger entering the field.

As he looked up from the small 4-pointer, he spotted a 120-class 8-pointer in the clover plot just 20 yards away. Just as he was considering shooting him, a bigger buck stepped out of the cedars into the clover just 30 yards away and began feeding toward Shawn’s stand. When it was within 20 yards, the trophy began quartering away -- and the archer loosed his shaft. The majestic buck spun around and ran right back into the cedar patch it had come out of.