Father and Daughter Team Up on Giant Kentucky Bucks

The Feese family is passionate about two things: farming and deer hunting. So much so that they’ve combined the two pursuits by blending and marketing their own deer feed, which is branded Maple Hill Monster Mix, after their south-central Kentucky farm’s name. The feed is a blend of corn, other grains, molasses and trace minerals.

From farming to habitat management to having their own brand of deer feed, the Feese family is passionate about hunting. Images courtesy of Billy Feese

Billy Feese put the mix to work this summer to attract and hold bucks. As summer progressed, a familiar buck soon appeared on the trail cameras and caught his attention.

A mixture of corn and Maple Hill Monster Mix held the deer on the property throughout the late summer and fall.

“We had pictures of this buck last year on another farm nearly a mile away,” Billy said. “He was good last year, but we felt like he might really turn into something with another year of growth.”

This summer, the buck turned up early on the main family farm. Soon, another big buck joined him and a few other bucks to form a summer bachelor group. The new buck had impressive antlers, but his giant body size stood out even more. He dwarfed even the larger-framed buck that Billy had his sights set on.

The two bucks ran together most of the summer.

No stranger to big bucks, Billy’s daughter, Rylee, took a liking to the giant-bodied buck. The two hunters kept tabs on the bucks all summer. Days before the archery opener, Billy’s target buck started to appear on the trail cameras during daylight hours.

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He hunted the first three days of the archery season without seeing it. Work and other obligations kept him out of the stand on Tuesday and Wednesday. The buck showed back up on camera Tuesday night, now out of velvet — perhaps that explains the change in his pattern.

He decided to hunt on Thursday evening. After freshening up the feed midday, he climbed into the elevated blind around 2 o’clock. The temperature was around 90 degrees, and the air inside the blind was brutal.

Billy hunted the first three days of the season, hoping for a chance at the buck in velvet.

“Even though it takes up some room and makes a little noise, I decided to run my IcyBreeze portable air conditioner to keep things comfortable,” he laughed. “I packed two five-gallon buckets of ice to the stand with me to fill the cooler.”

As the evening progressed, deer filtered in and out of the area, but neither of the big bucks appeared. With only 20 minutes of shooting light remaining, his target buck popped out 50 yards away. Due to a surgery that left him with two pins, multiple bone grafts, and six screws in his neck, Billy shoots a TenPoint crossbow during the early archery season. The distance wasn’t an issue, but the big buck stayed facing directly at the hunter.

With just a few minutes of shooting light remaining, another buck came in, and the two squared off with each other. When that buck nudged Billy’s buck in the rump with its antlers, the deer turned, finally presenting an opportunity. Billy took it.

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After giving the buck some time, he climbed down to investigate. He found some blood, but the cover was extremely thick. After following the trail for a little way, Billy backed out and went home to retrieve a thermal drone, which he uses to monitor his farm and search for wounded deer. Once the drone was airborne, the buck was quickly located. It had only gone about 100 yards.

After losing the trail in thick cover, Billy used a thermal drone to locate his buck.

Billy’s buck featured a giant, symmetrical 10-point frame with sweeping beams and tall tines. After caping the buck and dropping it off at the taxidermist, it taped out right at 170 inches. With his tag filled, Rylee was up to bat.

The massive-bodied deer was on the trail cameras often but had no real pattern, making it tough to plan a hunt.

Rylee’s buck remained on camera after Billy took his deer, but it wasn’t on a pattern.

Rylee and her dad sat in the blind once or twice with a crossbow, but never saw the buck during daylight. With Kentucky’s special youth firearms season approaching, Rylee knew it was time to get serious about the big buck before the rut, when he’d possibly relocate.

Unlike her dad’s thick-cover blind, Rylee’s favorite spot was a blind in a bean field that allowed for long-distance shooting. She is more than up to the task with her favorite 6.5 PRC rifle, topped with a mil-dot scope. “Her buck last year was over 400 yards away, and she hit right where she was aiming,” Billy beamed.

“It was kind of an unusual setup this year,” Billy said. “Normally, there would still be beans in the field around the blind. But this summer’s drought and heat made the beans mature early, so we had already harvested them. It was damp the day we combined, and several beans were left in the field. With recent rains, many of those beans sprouted, making an ideal food plot of four- to six-inch tall beans around the blind.”

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Rylee and Billy hunted Saturday morning, Oct. 11, with no luck. They returned to the blind around 4 p.m. on Sunday. Soon, does filtered into the beans to feed.

“At one time, there were too many to count,” Rylee laughed. “There had to be at least 25 deer around us, if not more.”

As the evening progressed, deer filtered in and out of the field. The hunters had already seen two bucks when Rylee turned to scan a brushy fence row behind the blind.

“I thought I saw the big-bodied buck for a split second in the fence row, but Dad didn’t see it,” she explained. “I turned away for a minute, then looked back, and he was standing there right beside us, only 50 yards away.”

Billy said that the gun was set up for a longer shot, which required some adjustments to take a crack at the buck.

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“The scope was turned up and focused for long range, and it was locked into the tripod,” he detailed. “We took it out of the tripod, turned the scope down as low as it goes, and focused it for 50 yards. I told her she’d have to freehand the shot out the side window of the blind.”

Prepared for a long-distance shot, Rylee had to scramble when the buck stepped out to the side of the blind at just 50 yards.

Rylee added, “There were two chairs and the tripod, plus some other stuff in the blind with us. There was a lot of situating going on so that I could shoot.”

Luckily, the buck remained in place while she got settled. Rylee aimed and squeezed the trigger.

“She did a great job,” Billy told. “It isn’t often that you get to watch the deer get shot, but I saw the bullet impact the deer. I knew she had hit him right where she was aiming.”

The buck bolted upon impact, and Rylee worried that she’d missed, despite her dad’s perspective. After giving the buck some time and gathering their gear, darkness had fallen, and they climbed down from the elevated blind, walking out to where the buck had been standing. There was a tiny bit of blood in the field, but not a heavy trail. There were two large sinkholes in the direction the buck had run, and Billy was a little worried that the buck might have fallen into one of them. Both holes were clear, so they decided to return home and retrieve the side-by-side with an added light bar.

They drove around the field and didn’t see the buck, so they started down the road edge. That’s when Rylee saw her buck lying just off the road. It hadn’t even made it off the field.

Once they got their hands on the buck, the real work began. They knew from trail camera photos that the buck’s body was enormous, but they immediately got a whole new appreciation for it.

“We’ve got an A-frame that we hang deer from to field dress them. On my buck, the nose was several inches off the ground. On Rylee’s buck, the entire head was still on the ground when we had the animal raised as high as it could go,” Billy laughed.

Once they got the buck out of the woods and to the taxidermist, measurements confirmed just how huge the deer was. The eye-to-nose measurement was 8 inches, the first neck measurement just behind the head was 21 inches, and the neck measurement was 26 inches, all on an early-season buck. It was the largest-bodied buck ever delivered to the taxidermist's shop. Upon examining the teeth, the experienced taxidermist estimated Rylee’s buck to be at least 6 1/2 years old.

The deer had a massive eight-point main frame with long tines and split G-2s. The heavy mass extended all the way out, and the rack grossed 150 inches.

The Feese family puts a lot of time into preparing for deer season. From food production to blind placement to habitat management, deer-season prep lasts all year long. For 2025, all that work paid off with two massive early-season bucks.

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