When one door closes, another one opens for this Nebraska pair.
What started like a typical afternoon of hunting quickly took an exciting turn for the Bulin family from Nebraska. Ryan and his dad, Alan, set out for the woods around 3 p.m. Ryan, bow in hand, set out for a familiar treestand. Alan set out with his rifle for an open pasture with a mix of brush and trees. However, by the the time he arrived, there were already deer browsing and he was forced to belly crawl a good distance to his final position.
The pair had already been texting status updates of the hunt, as they typically do to stay in close communication. By the time Alan came to a rest, the two ended up just more than 300 yards apart. He hadn't even had time to catch his breath from the crawl before opportunity struck. Much quicker than either of them expected, a shot rang out from Alan's rifle. The shot, nearly shaking Ryan from the tree, prompted him to text for an update.
"Was that you?" Ryan texted.
"Real nice buck, shot high," Alan replied. "Are you OK?"
During the brief exchange, Alan informed Ryan that the buck might be headed his direction. He was right.
A few short minutes later, Ryan was surrounded by a large group of does. Tailing the group was the impressive buck.
Fighting difficult wind and a 40-yard shot, Ryan placed his arrow exactly where he planned it before the buck had an opportunity to bust him. The beast took off as Ryan got ahold of his dad. A while later, the pair regrouped to trace the blood trail. At the end of the trail, they found a 165-inch, 22-point bruiser.
The family had captured a handful of trail camera pictures of the deer in the weeks leading up to the rut.
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