Jason Hodge

The Jason Hodge BuckJason Hodge, an account executive, and his wife had just moved into their new house southwest of Kansas City on 15 acres of land. Although he had seen deer around, he made plans to bowhunt in another area. When rain moved in that day, November 18, 2003, he decided to hunt a stand that was only 150 yards from his back door, a stand that he had just put up a few days before.

After several hours had passed, a nice 8 pointer came out of the cedar thicket in a fast trot. He decided to pass on it hoping for something a little bigger. What he got was something much, much bigger when a monster buck came down the same trail just a few minutes later.

“When I saw that buck, I knew immediately that I wanted him,” Hodge says. “I got pretty nervous at first, but I knew in order to harvest that buck, I’d have to calm down.”

The place where Jason had put the stand was in some very thick and dense woods. Hodge could see the buck, but he would have to find a shot window through the limbs and the leaves. When the buck moved in approximately 34 yards from his stand, Jason found the window he was looking for and the huge body buck stepped right into it. Hodge took the shot with his Muzzy 3-blade, 100-grain broadhead. The buck kicked and ran through some thick brush onto his neighbor’s property where Hodge lost sight of it.

“That’s when I got really nervous,” Hodge says. “I didn’t know how well I hit him, and I was terrified that I wouldn’t find him.”

After the shot, Hodge checked his arrow, which to his dismay didn’t have much blood on it. He decided to wait five or six hours before going after the deer. After getting permission from his neighbor to search his property, the anxious hunter called some of his friends and told them he had a really big buck down and that he needed help looking for it.

When his friends arrived, they returned to the stand and retraced the buck’s path.

“There wasn’t much of a blood trail, but the buck had left huge tracks in the mud for us to follow,” Hodge says. “It was getting late in the day by the time we started tracking the buck. When we got to the edge of the brush where the buck had entered, I considered calling off the search until the next day in fear that I’d jump him, but I decided to keep looking.”

Hodge and his friends walked 10 yards into the trees and found a large pool of blood. Then they spotted the massive buck lying dead on its side only 150 yards from where Hodge had shot it.

“When I saw that it was down, I started screaming,” Hodge says. “I’m sure that everyone in the county heard me. I was thrilled to death, and my friends were excited for me as well.”

The main-frame 10-point had 25 scorable points that grossed 233 3/8” and netted 215 5/8”. His inside spread measured 17 6/8” and his bases measured 5 7/8”. The massive buck weighed 232 pounds field dressed. It is one of the biggest racks ever taken in that area, and it is a beautiful, graceful, sweeping rack. Jason comments that he still has total strangers drive up to his house and ask if he will show them the buck. Hodge never minds having the visitors in because he believes a buck like this should be shared with others.

“Some folks ask if shooting a buck that big has made taking smaller deer less exciting,” Hodge says. “Actually, it’s upped my expectations. Harvesting that monster deer has just made hunting that much more fun and interesting.”