Bowhunter, Sick With Fever, Climbs 40-Foot Stand and Arrows Giant Buck

Not even a fever could wipe the smile off Josh Gawrysiak’s face after he anchored this world-class Wisconsin whitetail in September. Image courtesy of Josh Gawrysiak

Josh Gawrysiak, a real estate agent from Wisconsin, turkey hunted a property years ago, when he was a teenager. But time passed, and he hadn’t set foot on the place in years. In early 2025, he decided to approach the landowner, a family friend, about hunting the place again. The fellow hadn’t been doing much with the property, so Gawrysiak pitched a proposal.

“I worked out a deal with him,” he explained. “I’m helping him manage the property — I put in food plots and waterholes this spring and summer — in return for hunting permission. The landowner hasn’t hunted for years, but I got him pretty excited about it again, and he’s going to hunt this year, which is pretty cool.”

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The property already had a lot going for it, including a 5-acre field and white oak hardwoods. Gawrysiak, with a friend’s help and equipment, planted beans in the field. And by early summer, a huge buck started hitting them. But by July, droves of deer had completely wiped out the bean crop. In an effort to keep the buck feeding in the area, Gawrysiak had a buddy no-till drill the field with brassicas and while that was happening, he hung a few treestands.

“About three weeks later, once the brassicas were growing, the big buck was showing up regularly,” he said. “Interestingly, the deer would only come to the field on a southeast wind, and the wind speed had to be 2 mph or less, or he wouldn’t be anywhere on the property. It sounds nuts, but while documenting his habits, I identified that pattern.”

In tracking the buck’s habits, Gawrysiak determined that the only stand that might work for getting a shot at the buck was one that he’d hung 40 feet high on the field’s west side. The field has a big dip, and the stand had to be up that high in order to put the hunter high enough above the deer. But a stand of that height comes with challenges. Gawrysiak’s wife, Carissa, wanted to join him to film the hunt on opening day, but he didn’t feel safe about having her climb that high. A friend joined him to run the camera instead.

“My buddy ended up being allergic to the tree we were sitting in,” Gawrysiak said. “We almost had to quit hunting, but he hung in there. An 8-pointer that the big buck usually came to the field with walked out that afternoon, but my buck didn’t show.”

Then the behemoth whitetail disappeared for 11 days. Then, on Sept. 19, it reappeared on a trail camera at the brassica field. Gawrysiak wasn’t in his stand that afternoon, but he knew he needed to hunt the following day. Problem was, he’d gotten sick and was running a fever.

The buck had been hitting the property since early spring, but it vanished for 11 days right around the archery opener. Image courtesy of Josh Gawrysiak

“I reached the field around 3 p.m.,” Gawrysiak said. “It was supposed to be rainy, but the forecast changed to sunny. I was sweating bullets in my Scentlok suit. The stuff we do for a deer! I started seeing deer immediately. Some big white oaks were dropping tons of acorns to my left, and the brassica field was on my right. For most of the afternoon, I had 20 to 30 deer in the field. The wind was calm; everything was so still that I couldn’t even move.

“Through the oaks to my left, the 8-pointer that was the big buck’s running mate walked out,” he continued. “I had my release clipped to my loop in preparation for the big buck to appear. I worried that the deer would smell me with how profusely I was sweating.”

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About 45 minutes later, the monster buck stepped out. Gawrysiak was self-filming his hunt, and he instinctively turned the camera on the moment he spotted the world-class whitetail. He adjusted the camera arm so that he could draw his bow, but he still bumped it while drawing. He let down, readjusted the camera arm, and then drew again.

“He seemed to be ready to bolt,” he said. “I got my pin on him and shot. I thought my arrow hit him high in ‘no man’s land.’ I thought I had completely screwed it up. I had buck fever and was sitting there hashing everything out in my mind. I was a mess.”

After the deer on the property leveled 5 acres of beans by July, Gawrysiak had a buddy no-till drill some brassicas into the field, which kept the buck coming to the area. Image courtesy of Josh Gawrysiak.

Gawrysiak went home and watched the video footage, which revealed a different story: The arrow had struck perfectly, yielding a double-lung hit. Carissa wanted to recover the buck with him, so they loaded up their two babies and older son — no babysitter for the night — and returned to the scene to begin tracking.

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They located the downed buck very quickly just off the field’s edge. Clearly, it had expired seconds after the impact. Its 16-point rack sports a 165-inch mainframe, but more than 30 inches worth of non-typical antler points escalate the gross score to 196 1/8 inches, a giant whitetail buck by any measure and one well worth sweating it out in an unconventional setup.

Interestingly, Carissa’s target buck was on a trail camera in the daylight the same night that Josh killed his buck, but she had been at home with their children. With Josh’s tag filled, she has the rest of the season to try to connect the dots to that bruiser.