MY WORST BOWHUNTING MISTAKES WITH ROD WHITE

The I'm Going to Kill You Buck - Part 1

EDITOR'S NOTE: Many outdoorsmen have called Rod White of Sparta, Wisconsin, a bow-hunting phenom. At age 13, White took his first buck with a bow and began to shoot competitively. In 1993, he won a silver medal in the Junior World Championships. He took an international title in the National Outdoor Championships, placed second in the Intermediate Division of the Junior National Championship and became a member of the U.S. Olympic Festival team, placing fifth in the intermediate division -- all before his 17th birthday. Since then, White won an Olympic gold medal in 1996 and an Olympic bronze medal in 2000 as a member of the U.S. Men's Team, and numerous national championships and world titles as well as participating in ESPN's Great Outdoor Games. White, who doesn't just shoot paper, has taken 17 Pope & Young animals with his bow. Ranked third in the world for his archery prowess, White, will tell you that, "I make mistakes, too."

I made a mistake and caused my brother to not have an opportunity to take the biggest whitetail either one of us had seen in the woods. I really like to hunt with my brother. We enjoy each other's company. We enjoy hunting together and we like to video our hunts. Although we have made and sold one video, we are not really trying to produce commercial hunting videos. We just enjoy hunting together, filming our hunt, and watching them when we get back home.

On this hunt in Iowa, we were hunting an area that we had never hunted before. We spotted a big buck, about a 140 Pope & Young buck out in a field while we were driving down the road. We found a little logging road that went down to the river and a small stretch of timber on the edge of the river. About 40 yards from where we decided to put a tree stand, there was 40 to 50 acres of a fairly wooded area. So we put up our stands and decided to hunt.

My brother Rob, is also an extremely good bow shot, even out to 100 yards. He can drill a paper plate every time he shoots. He has the ability to take a deer with a bow at long range if he has too. When we scouted this area, we found some huge deer tracks. The tracks were going in both directions, and we could tell there was a really big buck in this area. I told my brother that I really wanted him to take a really big buck, so he should be the hunter, and I should be the videographer. He said, "No, you've been out at the Olympic games, and you haven't had a chance to hunt. You hunt this deer, and I'll hunt somewhere else." Finally we decided to flip a coin, and I won. So the next morning I went to this stand site well before daylight. When there wasn't enough light to see well or shoot, I started rattling antlers.

Fifteen minutes later a really nice 140-class dropped-tine buck shows up. He had a 21-inch spread. There was no doubt in my mind that I was going to take that deer. The deer field dressed at 268 pounds. He was huge. I shot the deer and he only ran a few yards before he dropped. I went and got Rob. We were both really excited about this fine buck that I had taken that scored 140 points on the Pope & Young. I felt certain that the buck that I had taken was the big buck whose huge tracks we had seen in the area. But my brother said, "Why don't we come back and hunt here in the morning? You can video me, and maybe I can take a deer out of the same stand." From first light until about 9:00 a.m. I rattled about every 30 minutes, but we didn't see a deer.

TOMORROW: THE I'M GOING TO KILL YOU BUCK - PART 2