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Tennessee Native Moves to Iowa and Kills the Buck of a Lifetime

White-Tailed Deer

Midwest

Tennessee Native Moves to Iowa and Kills the Buck of a Lifetime

Posted 2025-01-30  by  Darron McDougal

After living in the Volunteer State for five decades, suburban invasion drove Tony Smotherman to new digs—and better deer hunting

Rack Report Details
Buck:194 7/8 inches
Time of Year:Dec. 9, 2024
Place:Wayne County, Iowa
Weapon: CVA Accura LR-X .45-caliber muzzleloader 
Image: smotherman

After an arduous 625-mile move to Iowa from Tennessee, Tony Smotherman reaped the rewards of his journey and hard property management when this colossal buck offered him a 250-yard shot opportunity. Photo courtesy of Tony Smotherman.

Tony Smotherman of BPI Outdoors — the parent company of CVA, POWERBELT, and BERGARA — has traveled extensively to hunt throughout his lifetime. However, he’s always hung his hat in Tennessee. That is until March of 2024, when he picked up the life that he’s known for 50 years and moved it 625 miles to south-central Iowa.

“Deer hunting had something to do with moving to Iowa,” he explained, “but it was more so driven by Tennessee’s rampant housing influx. Following the pandemic, things got so out of hand. In our area, a couple large properties surrounding ours were sold to developers. It was time to get out of there.”

The previous owner of Smotherman’s new Iowa property was not a deer hunter. “The property was a working cattle operation with no food plots, no stands, no hunting history, and no trail camera history. Nothing. But, it appealed to me because it was a clean slate with a creek running through it.”

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The 625-mile move was “brutal,” as he put it. It entailed multiple trips back and forth with he and his wife’s belongings, and deer-season prep added into the mix nearly wore them out. “We did our best to outwork the neighbors to make the place as attractive to deer as possible.”

Around October 3, Smotherman finally captured a big buck on one of his trail cameras. “It was about a 175-inch buck,” he said. “It was rewarding to pull in a buck of that caliber after working so hard.”

But just going deer hunting in Iowa isn’t quite as simple as it is in Tennessee. “To buy a resident (Iowa) deer tag, you must live in the state for 90 days, possess a driver’s license, and have a piece of property and home insurance in your name,” Smotherman explained. “After that, you still have to submit an application requesting residency. Then, the DNR conducts background checks. Because we were transitioning out of Tennessee, I still had Tennessee properties in my name, so the DNR ‘red-flagged’ me. I should have been eligible to buy an archery license toward the end of September, but it kept getting pushed back.

“I had to ‘hunt’ my farm with binoculars and trail cameras during the prime weeks of hunting,” he lamented. “The 175-inch buck disappeared around the first of November, but then another huge buck moved in. About every five days, he’d pass by one trail camera. I had a dozen cameras in the area trying to figure out where he was coming from.”

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Near the end of November, Smotherman was finally approved to buy an archery tag.

“I went to the local grocery store and bought my tag,” he said. “I hung a stand midday and hunted that afternoon. I sat about 600 yards away from where the trail camera was catching the big deer every five days. I wasn’t there 20 minutes when he pushed out the 175-inch deer that I hadn’t seen in weeks. The 175-inch deer came within 12 yards. The bigger buck walked to within 65 yards before returning to the timber.”

Smotherman then went to Indiana to hunt with some TV show hosts that CVA sponsors. “The day before Iowa’s gun season, the buck daylighted on my trail camera in a food plot,” he said. “I told my friends that I was heading home. I arrived the afternoon of the first gun opener. The wind was right, so I went to the food plot. That afternoon, more than a dozen different bucks and a bunch of does came out, but no shooter. The following day, I again saw more than a dozen bucks, a handful of which were new. But, no shooter.”

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The buck appeared in Smotherman’s food plot late in the morning on Dec. 9, which meant he was bedded nearby. Tony swooped in for the kill that afternoon. Photo courtesy of Tony Smotherman.

On Monday morning, the buck was in the food plot at 10:16 a.m. “I knew that meant he was bedded very close to the plot and would likely return in the afternoon,” he said. “At about 4:15 p.m., I saw a buck moving through the timber. Suddenly, nine other bucks blew out into the plot chasing one doe. They were running around, knocking each other down, sliding on their backs through the mud … it was a rodeo. I identified the shooter, and he separated from the other bucks.”

The big deer was walking straight away from Smotherman. “My rangefinder wasn’t working,” he said. “About every 10 clicks, it gave a yardage, but I questioned the accuracy. The last range was 234 yards, and he was still walking away, heading up a ridge in the open field. He turned and looked back, giving me a quartering-away shot. I spun my turret and shot him for 250 yards.”

Smoke flooded the scene. When it cleared, the buck was heading back to the right, toward the other bucks.

“He was in the middle of nine other bucks,” Smotherman said, “and they all took off running toward a fence gap. My buck did a monster gazelle-like leap to the side of the gap. He went through the fence. His antlers got caught up, and he basically folded in half before disappearing.”

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“I backed out of there and went to the house to get my head right,” he explained. “After a couple of hours, my wife and I went back out and searched. We were unable to find any blood in the plot, so we walked along the abandoned electric fence. We ended up finding him about 5 yards from the fence. He had expired immediately when he disappeared.

“I was an absolute wreck,” he continued, “but it was a tremendous blessing.”

Moving due to suburbia’s encroachment was unfortunate, but the move put the Smothermans right in the middle of the world’s best whitetail hunting. Smotherman agrees that taking a 194 7/8-inch (gross) buck with 14-inch G-2s and G-3s made the long move well worth it. And, he has a new property to learn and hunt in the years ahead.

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