Terry Drury is no stranger to big deer, and he knows that pressuring a giant whitetail can be the kiss of death. But the co-owner of Drury Outdoors felt like his best chance to kill a Missouri giant was to keep taking swings at it, even from the same blind. The strategy paid off on October 16 when Drury killed a monster nontypical that grossed 216 inches B&C.
“We’d watched this buck since 2021, when he was 3-½ years old, and he just got bigger and bigger,” Drury tells F&S. “Our sightings and trail-cam pics proved that he was a homebody, with a small core area. This year, we had an extended drought in Missouri that had us 7 inches behind in normal rainfall, and that dry weather really had deer—including this buck—focused on a small pond in the timber. That pond was so critical that we decided the blind we had nearby was going to be the best spot to kill him, and with a little luck and a lot of hard work, we were able to keep returning to that same blind for multiple hunts.”
Indeed, when Drury finally killed the buck, it was the sixth time he and cameraman Forrest Bonin had seen the buck from that blind. “He kept coming in just out of range, or right at last light when we couldn’t kill him,” Drury says. “We’d stay in the blind for an hour after dark, making sure the buck had moved on and we didn’t bump him. On warm afternoons, we’d pack a cooler with ice, then leave the lid open and turn on a portable fan to blow the cool air around, because we didn’t want to open the window and let our scent out.” Finally, after a handful of encounters, the buck came out with plenty of light to spare. “We watched him make a rub for over 6 minutes, and then he walked into an opening and gave me a 21-yard shot,” says Drury.
The wait was well worth it. Drury’s buck sported a 186-inch main frame, with 30 inches of nontypical points. “He’s really got everything I dream of in a big whitetail,” Drury says. “He’s got a drop tine over 6 inches, kickers and stickers, and 48 inches of mass. Just an unbelievable buck, and proof that if you let a buck get old, he might get truly huge.”
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