“The last picture we got of him showed him walking off the property,” Don says. Sean and Don made the tough decision to wait longer yet.įor a while, the buck stayed out of sight. Then cameras showed the buck went nocturnal. They went elk hunting and had some family commitments that prevented them from hunting him in early season. 15, they agreed to wait until later to go after the buck. Although Missouri’s bow season would open Sept. The brothers discussed their strategy in great detail. The buck became more regular in the area and was caught on trail camera several times, allowing the hunters to track his progress and begin to figure out a pattern of behavior and travel. Everyone was glad to know the deer had made it through the winter. He made it through.’” During spring break, team member Chad John found one shed. “Isaac sent us a picture and told us, ‘Our buddy is alive. There was no question about whether it was the buck the Barrys were hunting, because of its distinctive brow tines. The first trail camera picture came Memorial Day weekend. So we rolled the dice and held our breath,” Sean says. “It wouldn’t have done justice to the animal, knowing how special it was. After much deliberation, they made another tough decision: to not hunt the buck for the remainder of the season. Even though a skilled taxidermist could have replaced what was gone, that wasn’t what the brothers wanted. Trail cam photos also helped them keep track of him.īy November, though, the buck’s antlers were broken up, with major tines gone.
#World record deer 2017 plus
The family had sheds, plus a video clip of him in velvet feeding in a soybean field in summer ’16. It was heartbreaking to see him walking in the opposite direction.”ĭocumentation of the buck was growing. “Isaac spotted him,” Sean remembers, “but I didn’t get a chance at him. Isaac was running the video camera when the deer came into view. That season, Sean also had a chance at him. He made a scrape 25 yards from my stand.” Don would have tried to kill the buck then - it was estimated he’d score 215-220 - but with no clear shot, he had to pass. “The buck came in just after shooting light,” he remembers. Then, in ’16, when the deer was 5 1/2, Don had a close call of his own. Sean had a chance to kill him that year but made the tough decision to pass him up. By the time he was 4 1/2 years old, the deer was estimated to score in the 180s. The neighbor right next door had trail cam pics of him.” Early EncountersĪlthough they began to notice good non-typical genetics in general throughout the farm, one buck was quickly becoming a local legend. The big non-typical was a homebody but would leave the property every once in a while. “But the neighbors are hunting nearly every day during the deer season. “We hunt very limitedly,” Don points out. We started to work together to try to save the up-and-comers,” he notes. As Sean explains, “Every year we would see big deer on our property, but they would get harvested on a neighbor’s property. “They work on the tree stands, CRP program and everything else it takes to run the farm when we are not there.”ĭespite their acreage, low fencing around the property means the Barrys face one dilemma that plagues many other land managers trying to practice quality management. “Isaac plants all the food plots, along with some help from Ethan Porter,” Sean adds. In fact, “Isaac knows deer as well as anyone I’ve ever met,” Don notes.
He’s not just a caretaker but also a part of the whitetail management team. Isaac Snow runs the property when the brothers are away. A large lake on one side makes the property unique.īecause the family members live and work in Chicago, nearly 400 miles away, a manager was hired to take care of the farm. They liked it because the farm had everything for growing trophy whitetails: CRP acreage, tillable ground, pastureland and ample woods, with little to moderate hunting pressure on and around it. The Barry family acquired the 3,000-acre property in far-northern Missouri’s Putnam County in 2010.
#World record deer 2017 professional
Would you have done what this hunter and his brother did to make it happen? Let’s examine their multi-year quest for one of the greatest bucks in bowhunting history, and the largest wild whitetail ever taken on professional video. By making some of the toughest decisions a hunter will ever face, Sean Barry arrowed what looks to be the world’s biggest free-ranging buck of 2017, a massive 35-point, 6 1/2-year-old non-typical.