The DDH TV crew of Brad Rucks, Chris Hermans, Hugh and Dustin McAloon made a quick trip to Illinois this past weekend to explore a new lease they will be hunting later this fall. 

The lease, provided by RAM Adventures (www.hunttrophies.com) is located in east-central Illinois a "short" six hour drive from our Wisconsin offices.  We arrived at 11 am on Saturday and the plan was to hang as many camera sets as possible Sat afternoon, hunt that evening and Sunday morning and finish hanging sets on Sunday.  RAM provided us with detailed color maps of the property, and they weren't kidding when they said it was awesome!

Both crews decided to hunt on the upper portion of the farm in sets that overlooked small and very secluded picked corn fields. Dustin's travel this fall will be very limited by the upcoming Wisconsin high-school football playoffs so I agreed that I would be the camera man this entire trip in hopes we could fill his tag. We were on stand less then five minutes when I saw two mature bucks move into the opposite end of the field 200 yards from our stand.  Over the next hour a dozen or more deer moved into the field and the two mature bucks worked towards our location.  Both bucks stopped and worked a scrape/licking branch on their way towards our location.  One of the bucks was a wide-racked 8 point with short tines, the other a narrow-high racked 8 with long times....Dustin wanted the wide buck, the camera man said take the first one that comes into range.

Eventually the high racked buck came over to visit a yearling buck that had been below us for nearly an hour.  The buck circled our field point location several times providing me with great footage, but each time stopping short of the shooting lanes.  It was as if he knew where he was safe?  Finally he crossed into one of the shooting lanes at 23 yards and Dustin made a perfect quartering away shot.  The Rage hit it's mark and the buck ran less then 125 yards and expired in the corn field. 

We were both estatic to harvest a mature buck on our first night and to capture it on video for everyone to see next season on DDH TV.  Thanks to RAM for providing a great piece of property...we will be back in November for an extended hunt.

Hugh McAloon