provided by John E. Phillips
Mossy Oak Pro Cody Robbins lives in an area that’s home to some of the best mule deer and elk hunting in North America. Most specifically, he believes, “Here in Delisle, Saskatchewan, we have bigger mule deer than you’ll find anywhere else.” Cody and his wife, Kelsy, host the TV show, “Live2Hunt.” He explains why he’s able to hunt some of the biggest mule deer in the mule deer’s home range. To learn more about Cody, visit his Facebook Page.
When that giant buck went down, I was shook up and rattled all at the same time. I was a mess. My cameraman Shane Hunter still was filming the buck as the buck ran 80 yards. He kept saying, “He’s down, Cody; he’s down, Cody. You’ve done well. You got him.” Well, I was an emotional disaster in front of the camera, down on my knees and completely overwhelmed with joy. I realized that my arrow had done exactly what I had wanted it to do, and although I didn’t see the buck go down, I knew I’d made a good shot on a world-class mule-deer buck.
As we walked up on the buck, I remembered sitting in my truck looking at this deer through my Vortex spotting scope earlier with a pen and a napkin in my hand. I started writing down numbers, trying to add up the number of inches I thought this mule-deer buck was carrying. When I totaled the points, I came up with 262, but then as we walked up to that buck and pulled his head out of the sagebrush, I knew I had a buck that would score 290 inches or more. On my napkin, I wrote down 26-inch main beams. However, when we taped the buck, his main beams were 31 inches. I also wrote down 17-inch G2s, but he had 20-inch G2s. On his drop tines, I guessed them at 12 inches, but they were actually 15 inches. His rack was so much bigger than I had field scored him that I hardly could believe it.
I didn’t realize what was happening when I lifted up that buck’s head, until I watched the footage. I was gasping for air and didn’t form one intelligent sentence for at least 20 seconds. I yelled, screamed, moaned and groaned like a crazy man. When I first saw this buck, I named him Tiny, like you would call a good friend that was overweight. But then after I put my hands on his antlers, I named him The King
We put pictures of this fine buck on social media while we were still in the field, and within no time, hunters started driving up in vehicles and pulling into the woods to see him. We spent about an hour taking pictures of this buck, while everyone showed up. After finishing the pictures, I noticed that a friend of mine, Bentley Coben, was in the crowd that had gathered. Bentley said to the hunters, “Someone should Google what the archery world-record mule-deer scored.” Someone else in the crowd yelled, “Kenneth Plank, Colorado, 1987.” Then someone else in the crowd said, “I think Cody’s deer will be way bigger than 273 net, which is the current world-record mule deer.” Many people in the crowd asked, “Do you think this deer could beat the official mule-deer world record?” Bentley said, “I have an official measuring tape in my truck. I’ll go get it, and we’ll find out right now.”
