Kentucky Couple Bags Massive Opening-Day Bucks

Have you ever passed up a great buck on a hunch that it would become a world-class deer the following season? It’s a risk-versus-reward decision, and one that Nathan Jefferson made last fall when a mid-150-class deer walked by his stand.

When Nathan Jefferson passed on a 150-class buck last season, he wondered if he was making the right decision and if the buck would make it another year. Images by Nathan Jefferson

“I’ve watched this buck for three years now,” Jefferson said. “He exploded from around a 90-inch deer in 2023 to the mid-150s in 2024. That’s a solid deer, but he was still young and clearly had the potential to be an absolute giant with another year.”

Jefferson was excited to see the buck on his trail cameras this summer.

He didn’t just pass the buck once last fall; he passed it up three times. Each time, his girlfriend, Chloe Pumpelly, told him he was crazy. It wasn’t just a passing comment; Pumpelly is also an avid hunter and knows a big buck when she sees one. Regardless, with trail camera photos of the buck on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day, Jefferson was confident the deer would make it to the 2025 hunting season.

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He hung trail cameras over established mineral licks early this past summer, and the buck showed up the first evening. Jefferson watched it grow all summer and as the deer got bigger, he realized that passing it the previous season was one of the best hunting decisions he’d ever made.

After seeing this past summer’s photos, Jefferson realized the buck would be massive this season.

Soon, other people started to notice the buck. “I got calls from friends and family who had seen the buck on the property as they drove by. I pretended I hadn’t seen it, trying to keep it as quiet as possible,” Jefferson laughed.

In the five days preceding the opener, the big buck became a daylight walker at a couple of stand locations. “He’d show up one time in front of one stand, then another in front of the other,” he noted. “I kept detailed notes on what time he would appear, wind, temperature, everything. There was no real pattern; it just seemed random.”

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On opening morning, Jefferson slipped in early to the stand the buck had been visiting the most frequently. Morning came and went with no signs of the giant deer. Knowing that the buck had been in front of that stand at some point almost daily, Jefferson decided to hunt there again that evening.

After the buck followed a daylight pattern in the days leading up to the opener, Jefferson knew which stand he needed to be in.

“I hadn’t been there long when I started seeing some deer,” Jefferson explained. “A nice 140-inch buck walked by pretty early in the afternoon, along with some smaller bucks and does. As evening approached, deer movement slowed down. I pulled out my phone and started to play a card game to pass the time.”

Soon, though, Jefferson heard the unmistakable sounds of a deer walking just behind his stand. He slowly turned his head and saw an 8-pointer that the giant deer normally traveled with at point-blank range. Jefferson slowly reached for his bow. As he turned back around, there stood the bigger buck just 10 yards away.

“I don’t know where he came from or how he got that close,” Jefferson exclaimed. “I wasn’t expecting him to come from that direction, and I didn’t have any shooting lanes cut. I started looking and finally found one small opening along the trail he was on. I’d have to shoot through the fork of a small tree to make it work, but he was close enough that I knew I could make the shot.”

The buck slowly worked down the trail. As Jefferson drew his bow, the 8-pointer spooked and crashed off, blowing as he went. Jefferson was worried that the big buck would turn away from the only opening he had for a shot. After what seemed like an eternity, the buck took another step, finally giving the hunter his opportunity. Jefferson settled his pin and released the arrow.

The hit was perfect, and the buck crashed off through the woods. Jefferson was confident that he would expire quickly. “It all happened so fast; I didn’t have time to get really shook up before the shot, but it hit me after he ran off,” Jefferson told.

After calming down, he texted his buddies and climbed down to go home and retrieve his side-by-side. As he got to his truck, his phone buzzed. It was Chloe, who’d been hunting her target buck on a different farm a few miles away. “I just shot the big 10! He’s down!” she said. Jefferson told her that he had also connected with his target buck.

After making the shot on his buck, Jefferson got the exciting news that his girlfriend, Chloe Pumpelly, had just taken her target buck on a different farm.

After receiving the text that he had shot the buck, Jefferson’s buddies all jumped in their trucks and arrived to help with the tracking and retrieval. He told them his girlfriend had also killed a buck, so they got her buck first, then returned to his hunting area.

“We started tracking and found good blood,” Jefferson said. “Everything was going well when we got to a creek and found my arrow. For some reason, my arrow hadn’t passed through, and when I picked it up out of the water, I noticed some gut matter on it. I started to worry when one of my buddies across the creek called out that he had found more blood. A second later, he said, ‘There he is,’ calm as could be.”

The big buck was even more impressive in person than it had been on camera, reaffirming that passing on him the year before was the right decision.

The combined score of both deer taped out at a massive 345 inches of antler.

After getting both deer out and hauled to the taxidermist, Jefferson and Pumpelly were finally able to score their bucks. Nathan’s buck was still in velvet and taped out at a massive 191 inches (gross). Chloe’s buck was already in hard antler and taped out at an impressive 154 inches (also gross), giving the couple a whopping total of 345 antler inches in one evening of hunting.

Jefferson’s buck sported a mind boggling 25-plus-inch inside spread.

“Honestly, it still hasn’t really set in that I was able to get him,” Jefferson admitted. “I thought I’d hunted big bucks in the past, but this one was on another level. To double up with Chloe and see how excited she was made it even more special.”

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