Got back Sunday night from 4.5 days in Missouri. Really wish I could have stayed longer, but Work is crazy right now. Was able to spend some quality time with my dad, we haven’t hunted together much in the last 10 years. Started off bowhunting some public land a buddy tipped me off on. Saw a ton of deer, 5 or 6 different 120-160” bucks. Realized I had a turkey tag, so I ran an arrow through a long beard on the first morning. The second morning, I was in a stand I hung the night before, where a slough funneled deer out in a huge crp field. Hadn’t seen much, and decided to get down to scout a new spot. After my bow was on the ground, I looked up to see a nice 8pt headed my way down the waters edge. He cruised right by the base of my tree, and after he went by, I managed to yank my bow back up. Nocked an arrow and proceeded to misjudge the yardage and shoot under him. Really shouldn’t have taken the shot. That night a fella at the same parking spot killed a pretty good one, had to help him drag it out in the snow. Friday we left and drove up to a small farm on the Iowa line that my dad had permission to. Hunted for a day and a half with rifles, and decided to shot this 10pt. Not the biggest for the area, but time was running out. After several years of hunting Kentucky, I can say that Missouri is leaps and bounds better on the public land end.




















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The deer hanging is a buck my buddy shot while we were up there. They’ve got a lease next to the public land we were hunting.

Looks like a blast. It would be fun to hunt a where they don't massacre every young buck and you can actually expect to see some big bucks on an average hunting trip.

Congrats Austin! That a nice bucks and great pics!

Looks like a good trip!

Congrats on a successful trip!! Thanks for sharing.

I don't know what part of MO you were hunting but, I agree Missouri has some great public land to deer hunt on as long as you hunt public land away from the larger cities. Missouri has at least 97 bow-only areas for deer that total more than 103,000 acres. Some tracts cover less than 100 acres, but others offer thousands of acres of bowhunting opportunities, such as the 13,732-acre Four Rivers Conservation Area, the 8,633-acre Schell-Osage Conservation Area, the 4,089-acre Drury-Mincy Conservation Area and the 7,044-acre Reform Conservation Area. Many of these tracts produce huge bucks.

Outstanding trip. Congratulations

Congrats on a good hunt with your dad and making memories. Taking my son out to Kansas to hunt birds with my dad after Christmas. He still talks about those missed turkeys.

Thanks fellas.

Glad he remembered the turkeys and not the crazy preacher lol. Hope y’all have a great tome out west

Oh he has brought up that also, good times

Great trip and write up. Congrats on a great buck and nice bird!

Congratulations. Nice buck. Impressive to go out of state on public land and get a deer that nice

Missouri gets passed over by a lot of folks looking at an out-of-state hunt.The state has some fantastic big-buck hunting.Glad to see you got a taste of it...

Thanks fellas

Congratulations on a great trip.

If the public land is better than what I've been hunting in KY, it must be extremely good.

I didn’t spend as much time In the stand as I normally would have, because my dad was with me, but I believe I saw north of 30 bucks in 4 days.

That’s awesome man! Congrats!

Great trip! Congrats, and it’s awesome that you got to spend quality time with your dad.

Nice bucks all around and had to be great hunting with your dad.

Sounds like you had a great trip! Congrats!

Nothing like time spent with family and friends. Congrats on a fine buck.