Casey Knight's southwest Iowa bow kill netted 185, enough to claim the top ranking for 2008 Iowa typical bow kills. Photo courtesy of Randy Templeton.

Casey Knight of Cresco certainly isn't new to seeing or handling big deer. In fact, he's seen and mounted plenty for customers in his Whistlin' Wings Taxidermy shop.

But Knight's dream was to shoot a big Midwestern buck of his own. Little did he know that dream would become reality this past November while hunting with John and Jeff Miller. Not only did Knight shoot the buck of a lifetime, the mainframe 6-by-7 would turn out to be Iowa's largest typical taken with a bow in 2008.

"Before this year, my biggest deer had been a 130-class 10-point taken during the muzzleloader season," Casey began. "Every year it seemed like I had big deer in the area, but just hadn't been able to connect. This year wasn't any different. I had trail camera pictures of three or four nice shooter bucks and high hopes of shooting one of them."

EARLY SEASON
"The season got off to a good start," Knight recalled. "In fact, that first week I had close encounters with three different big bucks. The first was a big 8-point that I had trail cam pictures of. When he came in and offered a shot, I simply misjudged the distance and shot right under him.

"An hour later, I spotted a 170-class 10-point coming down the same trail. Having missed the other buck, I now knew the distance and was determined not to make the same mistake. For whatever reason, the buck stopped a few steps short. That's when I heard a muzzleloader shot. Almost instantly the buck spun around and headed back the opposite direction. I wasn't sure who fired the shot, but since the youth season was still open, I could only assume it was someone hunting across the road.

"The next three weeks were slow. In fact, I hadn't seen a single deer, not even a doe. I couldn't figure it out; it was like someone had flipped a switch and the deer simply disappeared from the area."

PRIME TIME BEGINS
"I got a call from my friend, John Miller, in southwest Iowa. Jokingly, John said, 'If you come down here, you just might shoot a 200-inch buck.' Considering how my season had gone so far, I decided to take him up on the offer.

"That first afternoon I hunted from a stand hung in a point off a small timber bordering the edge of a pond. The surrounding area was mostly scrub brush and pasture, quite different than the big hardwood timbers I was used to hunting. Nevertheless, I saw several deer that evening, one 5-pointer and the rest does.

"The following morning I hunted a stand in an Osage Orange (hedge) grove along a creek. Around 10 a.m., I saw a nice 8-point, but not the kind of deer a guy would shoot. The rest of the morning was uneventful.