Late September usually isn’t considered the best time to arrow a giant whitetail, but bowhunter Matt Wachowiak, a student at University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, recently tagged a buck that scores a bit over 200 inches.
The photos shown here are from Matt Wachowiak’s Facebook page. In Matt’s own words:
Pretty surreal weekend. Had “Prince,” a deer we’ve been watching for 3 years, read the script Saturday night. I’ve got a ton of pics to post and some story line, but this will do for now. So many years of hard work and long drives for this deer. I’ve been ridiculed all my life for passing big deer, and this is what happens when you do! Original score came in at 200 2/8 inches gross. Deer of a lifetime! Thanks HighTine Addiction, LLC for all the hard work making our ideas become reality! Hundreds of trail camera pics of this Wisconsin giant! (Last year’s 160-inch sheds with spread)
As Matt explains in his Facebook post, he has last year’s sheds from this buck, and assuming the rack had an average spread, it would have scored about 160. As they say in the whitetail world, the buck “blew up” this season by growing an additional 40 inches of antler.
Wisconsin was blessed with a lot of rain this spring and summer (too much in many areas), so the buck certainly had a lot of nutritious food from which to choose. Note: Matt thanked HighTine Addiction in his post; HighTine is a property management company in Buffalo City, Wisconsin, and they specialize in custom food plots, tree planting, etc. In addition to natural browse, this buck also had the benefit of lush food plots.
In a follow-up FB post, Matt explained the cedar shavings covering the rack’s burrs, “This guy’s bedding area was full of small cedars. Him and his buddy had fresh cedar on their racks starting 2 weeks ago.”
Congrats, Matt, on a tremendous whitetail.