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Hunter: Daltyn Kramer
Animal: 201" Whitetail
Location: Iowa
Weapon: 20 Gauge Shot Gun

The story of this giant double-beamed buck began last Summer when he showed up in velvet in front of a number of my Reconyx cameras. He didn't look all that special except for a small curled extra beam on his right side. In fact I considered him a decent 2-1/2 yr old and felt he needed minimum one more year. Once hard horned the extra beam was gone. The pictures continued all fall and sightings picked up on through the late muzzle loading season. Knowing he was a "resident" of the small patch of timber I hunt, I felt confident he would live through the remainder of this season. I kept the cameras rolling right up to shed antler time and the pictures kept coming in. Once I felt sure most of the antlers had fallen I began combing the area and found the left side of him.

Roll ahead to the Summer of 2010 and he showed up again on camera. I only got three pictures of him all Summer and it was difficult to see just how big he was. I felt he would be in the 160s for sure and decided that we would shoot him if given the chance.

My son Daltyn would be up to bat first for the Youth gun season in Iowa. He shot a doe last year and informed me that he would be holding out for a buck with at least five points. With our goals set we headed out the last week of September. Our first two hunts were very uneventful seeing only does and fawns. With cool temps on the 30th and north winds I decided to take Daltyn out to a big Alfalfa field surrounded by big timber on two sides and a steep bluff to our South. This stand just happened to be the location where I killed my largest buck to date. Little did we know or expect what was soon to happen after climbing in. About an hour into our sit the sun was just dropping below the tree line when I spotted what I thought was a 140-150 class ten point enter the field. Daltyn immediately began quizzing me about how big he was and when I said he looked like a ten point he began to freak out in the tree. We watched him for the next fifteen minutes as he slowly worked our direction towards a few does that had appeared on our side of the field. You would have thought it was late October the way he was grunting and scent checking the does. I told Daltyn not to take a shot until he was within fifty yards but to slowly raise his gun and practice aiming his red dot scope at his vitals. By now I could see all the extra junk growing at the bases of his rack and recognized him as the unicorn buck from the Summer pics. At thirty yards he let out a low deep grunt and turned broadside. I told Daltyn to go ahead and take him and he informed me that he was scared. I asked if he was steady and told him to squeeze the trigger. Just before the shot he turned slightly quartered to but the slug found its mark through the shoulder across the top of the heart and out behind the opposite leg. The buck was down within thirty yards and our celebration began. This was my proudest moment as a hunter and a father to see one of my kids begin his hunting career with such a tremendous whitetail. Now it's big sister Darby's turn to try and top little brother with a whitetail of her own. Something tells me this is going to be a bit difficult but you just never know. We'll definitely have fun trying hopefully there will be another journal entry for the Kramer family come early October.

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