New Michigan State Record Typical Archery Buck Certified
OutdoorHub Reporters 04.23.13
Robert Sopsich of Milford, Michigan takes to heart the old Boy Scout adage of always being prepared. It served him well on October 2 of last year, when he and his brother headed out to their tree stand and spotted a huge 12-point, the very same one they had been catching glimpses of on their trail camera.
Sopsich was not one to let such an opportunity pass. He nocked an arrow and shot the buck at 45 yards out.
“He [the deer] ran about 400 yards,” said the bowhunter. “Went across the field and laid down in a ditch across some pine trees.”
Initially Sopsich could not be sure he had hit the deer. It took the brothers two hours to track down the large buck, during which it started raining.
“I was jumping up and down, having a blast,” said Sopsich after he found the deer–and got a close up look at the rack. “[…] We got it back to the house, got my dad out of the chair. He didn’t want to come out and go look. He’s like, ‘I’ll see it in the morning.’ I said ‘No, you’ve got to see this one.’”
The buck was panel scored last month by measurers Richard Wilt, Mike Heeg and John Ohner. The rack came in at 182 1/8 typical, narrowly beating the old state record from 1985 by only 2/8.
“I was so tense,” Sopsich described sitting through the panel scoring. “It was like when I shot the deer. It was tense.”
Included is a video of the scoring:
httpv://youtu.be/LPS6fMj9Sa8
