MS deer hunter finally bags ‘Houdini,’ a buck with 175-inch partially shed velvet antlers

When a Mississippi hunter got in his blind on the opening day of the early archery season, the hunt didn’t look very promising. He was dealing with a deer with a pattern that made him almost impossible to hunt. To top it off, it was Friday the 13th.

He was after a 7-year-old buck with a massive rack in Southwest Mississippi that the landowner named Houdini. Not only would the hunter harvest the 175-inch giant, he did it when the buck was shedding his velvet.

“He had this one he’d been following since he was 5 1/2 (years old),” said Joe Bumgardner of Starkville. “He called him Houdini since he disappeared as soon as he shed his velvet and was no longer seen in daylight. He was nocturnal.”

For the superstitious, it would be an unlucky day, but that didn’t seem to bother Bumgardner. What did concern him was Houdini appeared to have already performed his disappearing act.

“I really didn’t expect to see him,” Bumgardner said.

Hunter has plenty of deer to watch

Even so, Bumgardner was in a ground blind at 2 o’clock that afternoon overlooking a field planted in American jointvetch.

“My first deer came out to the vetch at 4 o’clock,” Bumgardner said. “It was a mature doe with two fawns.

“As time went on, various deer came to the vetch and fed for a while and disappeared. During the afternoon I had 31 deer come to feed at the vetch.”

At 7 p.m., Bumgardner saw a deer walk into the field. He could tell it was a big mature buck, but that was about all he could tell because the deer was about 100 yards away. That really didn’t matter though because the deer was too far away to shoot and it also walked out of sight.

About 15 minutes later, what appeared to be the same buck came into the field and started feeding. It was 50 yards away and at that range, Bumgardner could see it was the buck he was after.

Hunter makes 50-yard shot despite trigger hiccup

Bumgardner felt confident he could make the shot. He’d recently sent his Ravin R500 crossbow to the manufacturer for upgrades. When Bumgardner got the crossbow back, not only was it on-target, the trigger only took about 2 pounds of pressure to fire instead of the 6-8 pounds required before.

The buck turned broadside and Bumgardner flipped the safety off. He gently squeezed the trigger, but nothing happened. He squeezed harder, but still nothing. Then he squeezed even harder and it fired. The trigger was back to its former 6-8 pounds of pull, but Bumgardner felt confident in the shot.

“I kept my cool and my whole mindset was, ‘Keep that pin right behind the shoulder at mid-body,’” Bumgardner said.

Bumgardner went to where the deer had been standing and also messaged the landowner that he’d shot the buck. Initially, he didn’t see his arrow or blood, but soon found the back half of his arrow as well as blood. The landowner and another hunter arrived, and they followed the blood trail into the woods where the trail began to taper off.

MS hunter bags a deer of a lifetime

The three determined from the blood trail that the shot was good, but decided to wait until morning to continue trailing it to make sure it had expired. With a trophy buck on the line, they also called a tracker with a dog.

When the tracker and his dog arrived the following morning, they returned to the spot where they stopped the night before. By the way the dog was acting, the tracker said the deer was close. As they walked around, they found the buck less than 40 yards away and not only was it truly a giant, it had partially shed its velvet and had long strings of it hanging down.

The buck had a 19-inch inside spread with 24-inch main beams. The G2s were just over 9 inches and 11 inches. The G3s were 10 6/8 and 11 3/8 inches and the bases measured 6 inches. The total gross green score was 175 3/8 inches.

Bumgardner had been lucky in that the buck came out during legal shooting hours. He was lucky on another front, too. The strings of velvet hanging from the antlers will make a unique mount and there was a narrow window of opportunity for that to happen. Bumgardmer said once a deer begins to rub his antlers to remove the velvet, the process typically only takes a day or a little more.

Although Bumgardner has been harvesting deer with archery equipment since the 1980s, he said the huge rack and partially shed velvet make it the most impressive deer he’s ever taken. So much so, he said while he was taking it to a taxidermist, he kept looking at it every few minutes in disbelief.

“I can’t believe this son of a gun,” Bumgardner said. “It happened to me.”