Josh Crippen writes, "I took this buck on October 28th, 2014 on a leftover deer tag on the plains of eastern Colorado. I spotted this buck the night before and could not gain permission to hunt. He was with 10 doe’s and was acting rutty. The next day I had to work and all I could think about was the big framed deer that we had seen the night prior. At the end of the day on the 28th, I talked to my wife and told her that I was going to go pick up a buddy of mine and see if we could locate the big buck.
After about an hour of driving and picking up my friend, we were closing in on the area where I had seen the buck the night before. When we arrived at the field all we could find was the 10 doe’s from the night before and they were well within shooting distance from the road! My heart sank as I was sure that someone had taken the big buck that day while I was working. I told my friend that I might have an idea of where the deer may have gone if he was pressured, so we headed back to another property that I had permission to hunt. After arriving at the property we were once again having that sinking feeling as the big buck was nowhere to be seen. As I was glassing a big CRP field about a mile to the south, I could make out a buck standing in the middle of the field and my heart started to race. We put the spotting scope on him and realized that it was in fact a good buck, but could not tell how big. I told my friend, JD, that we had nothing to lose and we needed to make a play at him. We got into position to start our stalk and within 200 yards of the pickup I stopped and looked through my binoculars and could see the buck laying with his head flat on the ground staring a hole straight through us. JD suggested that we back out and try another approach, but myself being hard headed told him, "let’s just go straight at him we have nothing to lose and are already well within the effective range of my 7mm RUM".
As we approached where the buck was bedded we could not find him in the nearly 6' tall CRP grass and it was just at that instant he stood up and was making tracks to get out of the country. My first shot landed somewhere in the next county I’m sure, but my second shot was true and anchored the buck for good. After a lot of whooping and hollering we stood there in shock looking at the biggest buck that I have ever taken. He is right at 32" outside with a rough gross score of 186. I am still presently on cloud 9."