Thirty-year-old Cody Huhn is obsessed with chasing big whitetail bucks on public land in the Midwest. Practically living on the road in pursuit of whitetails during the fall, Huhn has taken an impressive number of wall hangers over the years—from his native state of Michigan to his current home state of Iowa—but none as big as the 206-inch buck he shot on a public river bottom in Iowa at the end of October.
Huhn said a friend of a friend heard hearsay about the buck in a bar earlier this year and tipped him off. “I put 10,000 miles on my truck driving back and forth between my home and this area trying to find this deer,” Huhn tells Field & Stream. “In mid-July, I was driving one of my normal routes and, bang, there he was standing in a bean field.”
As soon as Huhn saw the buck, he knew the rumors he’d heard about its size were legitimate, he said. “I could see that massive drop tine coming off his right side,” he said. “He was extremely sketched out by the sound of my truck, and he trotted off into a ditch where he stayed for the rest of the evening.”
Huhn, a videographer who runs his own Youtube channel called Public Land Whitetails, managed to capture a blurry clip of the buck hiding in the ditch that evening, which he later posted online. After the clip went viral, he decided he'd keep quiet about the deer unless he managed to tag it during deer season, he said.
“I knew instantly, based on the area, that this was going to be a huntable buck on public land,” he said. “He was in a private bean field that day, but it’s surrounded by public. I knew I’d have a chance at him, especially during the rut.”
The Hunt Begins
After the sighting, Huhn began scattering trail cameras all over the surrounding public land. He located an area where he suspected the deer would spend time once the rut kicked off, and put even more cameras out there. Then, on August 1, the buck showed up on one of his cameras. “He knew something was up after I captured that first photo,” Huhn recalled. “He immediately relocated after that to a spot more than a mile away.”
Huhn didn’t see the deer again until the end of September, glassing him from 200 yards away while he fed in another bean field. During that sighting, the deer was moving closer to the original area that Huhn had pinpointed as its potential rut range. The intel gave Huhn the confidence he needed coming into the October 1st bow-season opener, he said.
“As soon as October rolled around, I was in the area every morning and every evening glassing from ridge tops down into the bottoms,” he said. “But I didn’t have a single sighting or trail cam picture until October 20.” That’s when he decided to check one of his cameras inside the buck’s core area. No sooner had he pulled the camera off the tree than the buck jumped out of its bed less than 40 yards away.
A Failed Attempt
Huhn wasn’t deterred after bumping the buck out of its bed on October 20th. He continued to hunt the core area, and four days later, the buck walked within bow range of his tree saddle. “When I spotted him, he was bout 150 yards out, in the middle of a cut corn field, pushing does around,” he said. “Once the does dropped off, he followed the corn line all the way into 25 yards.”
Huhn drew back and shot, he said, but the arrow flew high and right—hitting the buck but missing its vitals altogether. He followed the blood trail for hours the following morning but only found an area where the wounded buck had bedded down the night before.
Still persistent, Huhn stayed in the area and continued to hunt the buck. He traced its blood trail back and forth across the creek system multiple times. Then, on October 29, four days after his failed shot, he had his closest encounter yet.
“I settled into an oxbow on the river that I’d previously scouted, and as I’m setting up my camera equipment, I saw one drop of dried blood from the previous night,” he said. “Then I saw a deer trail nearby, and when I looked down it, he was standing there raking a tree less than 10 yards away from me.”
Huhn stayed put, and the deer eventually closed the gap between them to just 5 yards, he said. “I’ve never felt anything like what I felt in that moment,” he said. “My vision narrowed. My head felt like a balloon. I drew back as slowly and as quietly as I possibly could and let the arrow rip through the little bit of CRP grass that separated us.”
This time the arrow hit its mark, passing through both lungs and the buck’s heart. “He ran less than 45 yards and piled up en route to the same field where I’d first spotted him back in August,” he said. “I couldn’t believe that my prayers were answered.”
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According to Huhn, who's now chasing mature bucks on public land in Wisconsin, the deer had 16 scorable points, including the giant drop time coming off its right main beam. The inside spread is 19 ¾ inches, and the longer of its two main beams stretches a whopping 25 inches. The fully-tallied unofficial green score is 206 ¼ inches B&C.
