It wasn't with a bow, instead my rifle during the MO firearms season, but it is with great pride and pleasure that I was able to write the final chapter on a buck that I've known for 3 years...."Gimp". My wife, Nicole, and I saw this buck for the first time on her first deer hunt 3 years ago during the 2011 MO firearms season. He was a small basket rack 8-point back then. He was limping as he approached us and I noticed he had an injured right front foot. I told Nicole to take him since he had the injury. He spotted Nicole as she was getting the gun up and he ran off. I really didn't think too much about it at the time. I didn't see him again in 2011 or 2012. Last year while bowhunting in December, I saw a great looking buck with a doe...limping. When I reviewed the footage and took a closer look at the buck I couldn't believe my eyes. It was him! I said to myself, "I can't believe that gimped up buck survived the last two years and has 140" headgear." From then on I started calling him "Gimp". I hunted him hard the remainder of the 2013 bow season but wasn't able to get it done. Hoping he would make through the winter and into this season, I put out corn and other supplemental feed. I got plenty of pics from my Browning Trail Cameras on the food piles throughout the winter. As the temps rose and the foliage began to grow in the early spring, he disappeared. It wasn't until August that I got another picture of him. My hunt for Gimp began September 15 without a single sighting or trailcam pic of him during the early bowseason. In early November I finally got another picture of him over a mock scrape. I set up on him two days later. It was raining so I set up a ground blind to keep my video equipment dry. I was worried about putting up the blind too close to the mock scrape thinking it would disturb the area too much. So, I decided to set up the blind about 80 yards from the mock scrape and use a decoy to draw him into range. As luck would have it, he came to check the mock scrape that evening. I grunted once, he spotted the decoy and started to close the distance. (Here's a screen shot of him approaching my set up).... Gimp was at 60 yards and still closing the distance. Everything was going as planned and I was going to be left with an opportunity with my Quest Drive inside 30 yards. That's when a doe entered a food plot and started to blow at the decoy. Gimp stopped and did an about face back into the woods where he came out. Between that encounter and the firearms season, Gimp narrowly avoided me on several occasions. (I hunted here that exact morning. The time is actually 5:28am. It's still set to daylight savings time. He came through before daylight) (This was the final day of the early MO bowseason. I hunted on the other side of this thicket, not 100 yards from where he exited it. Wrong place, wrong time.) With firearms season open, I chose to carry my 30.06 to put the odds in my favor. On the third day of gun season, Nicole and I were hunting together and Gimp made an appearance. He offered me two separate marginal shots that I opted not to take even with a high powered rifle. I wasn't about to wound this deer. Another narrow miss on ole Gimp. Two days later, it somehow all came together and I was able to harvest him out of a small clover food plot where I've gotten quite a few pics of him crossing. Gimp was an absolute legend of buck on my parents' farm. I couldn't be more proud of him. He ended up scoring 168-3/8". An absolute stud of buck for southeast MO. And finally, why he was named Gimp...
Awesome x 10! That is a hell of a deer bud, proud of it for ya. Thanks for posting the pics and story, please post some pics of the mount when you get it back! Congratulations!
That's one hell of a buck! Congrats. That ankle had to be painful, looks nasty. It's amazing what these animals can endure. I imagine it was easy to identify his track.
Great deer Derek! That's a hell of a buck anywhere, but especially for around here. I'm looking forward to seeing the footage. Awesome stuff.
