Kentucky Bowhunter Arrows a Drop-Tine Giant

Isaac Whalen is all smiles behind the buck he elected not to hunt in 2023, when it was a 180-incher. His patience allowed the buck to reach full maturity and push the 200-inch mark. Photo courtesy of Isaac Whalen.

Kentucky hunter Isaac Whalen is a good ol’ country boy with solid values and a few priorities in life. After his pursuit of God, his wife, and his family’s third-generation business, he practically bleeds deer hunting. Whalen has arrowed a handful of world-class whitetails, too, partly because he is willing to eat his tag some years and pass on bucks most hunters would happily shoot. In 2023, for example, he elected not to pursue a 180-inch buck because he believed it would likely exceed 200 inches given one more year. And he was right.

“I’d known about this buck since 2021,” Whalen said. “I have one shed from his 2-1/2-year-old antlers. I found the matching sets for the following two springs. I didn’t find his 5-1/2-year-old set because I was too nervous to go into a particular area and look for them.”

Traditionally, the buck didn’t show up on the trail cameras until fall, but that changed this year. “I was getting him on the trail cameras two months earlier than normal,” Whalen said. “However, the 2,000-plus pictures I captured of him were all at nighttime. If I was going to kill him in the early season, I knew that it would not be over the corn pile he was hitting, which I put out on Aug. 3.”

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Finally, Whalen connected the dots to an advantage. “The buck was feeding in a bean field not too far from the corn pile,” he said. “I was able to observe the field and pattern him for eight weeks. That helped me nail down two specific areas where he was entering the field.”

Next, Whalen moved in to scout and hang a stand. “I prefer to be 20 feet up a tree or higher,” he said. “Well, this particular spot had no big trees. The only tree I found that would work was about the size of a women’s basketball. I was only able to get about 10 feet off the ground.”

Given how the spot lays out, deer were at eye level with or above Whalen before they would enter the bean field, which made him nervous. He hunted it a quite few times without seeing his target buck, but he saw some 160- and 170-inch bucks at 10 to 15 yards and passed them. The setup was working.

“Normally, we get a lot of west and southwest winds during September,” Whalen said. “With the hurricanes, the winds weren’t right as often as I would have liked.”

On Sept. 23, he was hunting the stand on an excellent afternoon. “A 175-inch deer came out, and I was praying and praying that God would send out the buck I was hunting,” he said. “It started getting dark, and I could hear something off to my right and downwind, but I couldn’t see it.”

When legal light expired, Whalen climbed down and walked to his truck.

“At home, I reviewed my trail camera pictures,” he said. “I learned that the buck had watched me get out of the tree and walk out to my truck. My truck was only about 150 yards away, and with the time stamp on the pictures, it was obvious that he moved off when I started my truck.”

Whalen hunted several times without encountering the buck, but trail camera images assured him that the monster was still in the area. Photo courtesy of Isaac Whalen.

Worried about what seemed like a fiasco, Whalen was relieved when the buck showed up at the corn pile again at 3 a.m. And two nights later, the wind was right to hunt the bean-field edge again.

“I was praying that God would bring him by early so that I’d have time to make a good shot and recover him before dark,” he said. “I was sitting with my bow on my lap and my phone in my hands. I was set up to video the hunt, and at about 7:15 every evening I hunted, I’d clip my phone in, begin recording, and let it run until the end of shooting time. At about 7 o’clock, though, I looked up and saw the buck standing eye level 40 yards away looking right at me. When he looked away, I slid my phone behind my back so it wouldn’t fall.”

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Still at eye level, the buck came right at Whalen and was facing him at about 20 yards. “I was sure he could see me, but he walked right where he needed to,” he said. “I had intentionally left a small tree out in front of the stand for coverage. When he walked behind it, I lifted my bow and drew in one motion, and the buck stopped behind it. Now, he was about 18 yards away, but I could only see his head. He started walking out into the field. I decided not to mouth-grunt. I had been aiming at his shoulder, but I didn’t want to risk hitting it even though he was walking, so I pulled my pin slightly back and shot.”

For elevation, the hit was perfect, but laterally, it was slightly too far back. “The buck ran about 15 feet and immediately slowed down,” Whalen said. “He made it about 50 yards and laid down in the field. I watched him for about 15 minutes. He got up and made it to the edge of some woods and laid down again.”

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Even though he had seen coyotes in the area, Whalen made the tough call to leave the buck overnight. Sick to his stomach the entire sleepless night, Whalen and his friend Eli Switzer went out the next morning after the fog lifted and located the buck exactly where Whalen had last seen it. The deer had obviously died not too long after Whalen had backed out the previous evening. He said that even though the buck hadn’t gone far, he was still devastated that his shot had not been perfect.

A speechless Whalen admires the buck, which he found the morning after he had arrowed it. Photo courtesy of Isaac Whalen.

“It was a very emotional experience,” Whalen said. “The hours of research, planning, management, and hunting that went into harvesting this buck were countless. I’m confident if I had hunted him last year that I could have at least gotten an opportunity to kill him, but I was sure he could grow bigger. And he did. He added about 20 inches, going from approximately 180 inches to nearly 210 inches. I’ll probably never hunt a deer this big again in my life.

“I really have to thank my buddy Eli, who got me into hunting, and his dad, Daniel, who taught him how to hunt. My success has been the byproduct of Daniel’s knowledge. I didn’t grow up in a hunting family, so Eli taught me, and Daniel taught him. It wouldn’t have been possible without those guys.”