Category: Buck Pool

We have our first official score on the board. Isaac Blohowiak’s buck scored 123 1/4″. That puts him in first place by default now. The bar has officially been set. This is also our first 2022 buck to be added to the all-time list coming in at #23. Congrats again on a great buck, Isaac.

Big congrats to Local 400 steamfitter Grant Vander Loop on his first bow kill. Grant took this guy down Sunday evening. It’s a 7-point buck and Grant took him down at 20 yards. Dressed out at 150 lbs. Shot with 29″ Mathews V3X & Rage Hypodermic 2.0. In Grant’s own words: “Came in strutting following doe. Couldn’t get a shot on him at first, till he walked into pipeline. Let one fly and he ran 100 yds on a heart/lung shot. First bow kill.”

Awesome work, Grant. Congrats on your first bow buck!

A great success story courtesy of NEW Account Manager Brandon Blaney. Brandon sent us this tale of his friend Brad, who had two firsts on a recent hunting trip to Montana. Congrats to Brandon and Brad. Here’s the story:

My buddy Brad pulled and Elk tag in a unit that is very difficult to pull a tag for non-residents (only 3 bull tags given out per year). So, I decided right away I was going along for the trip no matter what. After a weekend of not being able to do much elk hunting because of the rain and snow which makes the roads impassable, we decided to move the camper four hours to the western end of the unit. Now it’s Wednesday and were starting to feel the pressure a little bit. Brad and I headed out on the Ranger before light. Right at shooting light we saw a large herd of mule deer about 100 yards away from us with a 3×3 buck in it. After some debate he decided to take a shot at it. He put a nice shot right through the heart and we had the deer back to the Ranger 30 minutes later.

After dropping it off at the camper to cut up later, we decided to head further south to a spot where he had seen a nice bull the day before but had given him the slip. But, after a whole day of walking and glassing all we had seen was a bunch of nice mule deer bucks that we didn’t have a tag for anymore. So, Brad says he wants to check one more spot where he saw them the day before and if we left right then we could make it to the Ranger in time to glass before shooting light ends. As we were pulling up to this river basin, Brad saw something, so we stopped but it was just a mule deer doe. Then he looked to his right and goes ELK! I pulled up my binoculars and saw a small herd of elk with a big bull standing broadside glowing in the sunlight. At that point he was 563 yards away with the wind blowing right at him. We grabbed the shooting stick and ran about 700 yards to the right and the headed in the direction that the herd went. As we came to a small ridge, we crawled up it on our bellies knowing that they should be just on the other side of it, and sure enough there he was standing broadside at 353 yards under a tree. We got setup to shoot, and Brad had bull fever so bad that he can’t steady the crosshairs on him, so I am talking to him telling to breathe and that he doesn’t know that we are there, he’s not going anywhere, take your time, relax.

He takes the shot, and the bull starts to trot towards us and turns broadside. Takes another shot and the bull does the same thing, and another shot! Soon the bull is 250 yards away broadside. Brad settles in and takes another shot… this time the bull arches his back and 5 seconds later drops! Brad was able to put one right into the heart. Then the real work began. It took us 8 hours to get him back to camp! This was Brad’s first time ever shooting a deer or an elk and he got them both in the same day!

Three things in life are guaranteed: Death, taxes, and Justin Beck harvesting quality bucks. Justin never disappoints and this year is no different. Justin took this monster down on Saturday, October 29. Here’s what he sent us:

“Went towards south end of property where I could watch a white oak area that I knew deer were bedding in. Set up next to a trail intersection.  Perfect to hunt this spot with SE wind. Around 5 I had some noise to my left and the buck was 80 yards away and coming in quicker. I got ready and stuck him at 20.  Whole event happened in less than 60 seconds. He ended up being quartered to me a touch more than I thought.  Ran off about 80 yards and expired eventually in sight. Single lung, liver hit.  The deer is a 4 yr old from what I can tell.  Heavy mass lots of blading and some stickers.  Fully rutted up.  Very swole. Lol. Big body but didn’t weigh him.”

Congrats on another monster, Justin. Justin is our Director of Service – Central Wisconsin Accounts. I’m sure this one will be a contender this year. We’ll keep you posted when it’s scored.

Trina Ignatowski, wife of Director of Central Wisconsin Accounts Chris “Iggy” Ignatowski, dropped this buck in the evening hours of October 26. Unfortunately, she dropped him with a Scion xB. Happy to report that no humans were hurt. I can’t say the same for the deer or the car.

Congrats to Isaac on this 8 pt. bruiser hunting on public land in Trempealeau County, WI! I know he has put a ton of work into getting something out there and it definitely paid off! He set off with some of his best buddies for a week and he came home with his tag punched! Here is what he had to say:

When we shed hunted last spring I noticed a lot of sign in this spot and figured it would be good during the rut. So I got in early and hung a stand. I had a doe by me in the dark all morning and she knew I was there but never busted me. Around 7:10 a buck and doe came down the ridge into the bottom I was in and I shot him at 20 yards. He ran 30 yards and I watched him fall.

Great to see guys trying new things and making an adventure out of it! Isaac is a plumbing apprentice out of Local 400. Congrats again and good luck to everyone this week! The rut is on fellas!

I was with a group of buddies and my brother in on public land. Things were pretty slow the week we were there as the rut wasn’t quite happening and the weather was warm and raining. To make things worse, the pressure from other hunters was even worse on any deer sightings. After seeing lots of scrapes and rubs all over, we chalked it up to the deer being nocturnal yet. My other buddy Mike was having luck on seeing this buck for 3 days in a row so on the last day, he came up with a plan to try and get an arrow in him. Mike set up where he was seeing him every day and he put me in a spot where he thought he was headed. The plan worked out as Mike had him coming in like it had been but he couldn’t get a shot. Mike texted me to try a doe bleat and sure enough, he headed my way. When he came in I realized this wasn’t the type of buck I was after but after the long week of scouting/hiking up mini-mountains, we both decided to fill a tag and not go home empty handed. The buck came in to a watering hole I was sitting on and at 40 yards, he turned broadside and I took the shot. It ended up passing thru both the lungs and stuck in the ground behind him. The buck ran 60 yards and dropped. Our plan worked and we were both excited except for the fact we had to drag him out a mile and a half to the truck. We had a great hunt and made many memories and are looking forward to trying it again next bow season! Below is pic of where the deer was standing and the tree across the pond next to the water is where I was sitting with my saddle and feet on the ground. It was a different feeling being at eye level in the open and being able to bring down a deer.

Jeff is an estimator out of the De Pere office.

Congratulations to the both of these guys on bringing back this monster mule deer in Montana this past week. Let’s call this a team effort and you’ll understand what I mean when you read what they sent me, pretty crazy story!

Jeff,

So here is how it all shook out.

After the first day of deer hunting, we had one buck down and had not seen much for deer. We swung by a gas station on the way to the motel. A hunter asked John how we did. He told him one down, two to go. He told John they had seen a 5×5 buck and showed him on Onyx where it was. So we went there in the morning to scout. Sure enough, as the Montana sunrise arrived, there he was 875 yards out with a couple hand fulls of does. We watched as he dropped down toward the river bottom. We came up with our plan. To sneak into the cover in the evening where we last saw him in the and wait for him to come back to the wheat field to feed.

We headed in. About 150 yards from where we needed to be, the does started appearing in the field. We then had to army crawl the remainder of the way. We set up on each side of a sage brush. As we were waiting, I took a pic of us waiting for the ambush. The deer kept creeping out of the cover. We had 5 bucks and about 10 does. They all went out into the field. An hour went by before John pointed out a doe. Then I saw him at about 300 yards. I let John know and we got ready. It wasn’t long before the doe slipped into the field and he came up behind her. Perfectly broadside at 81 yards, now was the time we waited for. I shot. He stared at us. John shot. Still no movement. I fired again as did John. He turned to head back for cover has he stumbled to the ground. We celebrated and wondered what had just happened. We found that we took out his heart, lungs and front shoulders.

Justin is a service tech out of the De Pere office and John is a Project Executive out of the De Pere office. FYI- they are brothers in-law, Justin is married to John’s sister!

Congrats to Cody Zwick on taking this big boy down Sunday afternoon in the Land O Lakes area. We don’t have many other details other than Cody got him in the afternoon and he has a 14″ inside spread. This is another one we obviously don’t have a measurement on yet, but we’ll add him to the list of five 2022 hunters with scores TBD.

Cody is a Local 18 sheet metal foreman currently working at LP Sagola. Congrats again, Cody, on a great buck and a successful hunt!

As you probably know, for the past few years Tweet Garot has supported our buck pool with a gift for everyone who joins.

In 2020 we got the Richardson Tweet Garot Buck Club trucker hats. In 2021 we got the blaze camo Tweet Garot stocking caps.

This year we put our heads together to try come up with something unique that people would find useful during hunting season. We came up with these rechargeable hand warmers/power banks.

You can’t see it in the pictures, but if you flip device over it has a small button to turn the warmer on/off and it has three different levels of heat. It also has a USB port, so if you find yourself away from power with a drained cell phone battery you can plug your phone into this for a quick charge. The device comes with its own USB charging cable and pouch so you can charge it and have it ready for your next hunting trip. I have to say, Jeff and I tried these a few weeks ago and they got warm fast. I look forward to throwing this into my hand muff (there has to be a better name for it than that) when it gets cold on the hunt because I hate wearing gloves and I get tired of paying for those single-use Heat Factory things every year.

Jeff and I will make sure to these get distributed to everyone as quickly as possible. If you want to arrange a dropoff/pickup contact me and we can set something up.

Big thanks to Christopher Howald and Shelly Murphy for making this happen. Best of luck this weekend!

Our raffle prize for Week 5 of the TG Buck Pool is a $50 Fleet Farm gift card and assorted cool Hilti swag courtesy of Bonnie Horen from Hilti. Here’s the video:

This week’s lucky winner is Brad Duchateau. Brad is a Local 18 fabricator and sandblaster and he’s currently working out of our Wrightstown shop. Congrats to Brad, and thanks once again to Bonnie and Hilti for the great prize! A quick, personal side note about Brad’s Fleet Farm gift card: It’s not always the first place I think of for my outdoor gear, but man, FF has aisle after aisle of cool hunting gear. I spend too much time there this time of year and inevitably I go in looking for one or two things and end up buying far more than I intended, including snacks and a Charlie Berens t-shirt or hat. What I’m saying is I wanted that gift card.

Anyway, it’s been quiet for over a week in the buck pool. The October Lull has been back in full force. If you haven’t checked out this week’s podcast with Casey Liegeois I highly recommend it. It’s an entertaining way to pass the time on the drive to your hunting land or even something to play in your AirPods if the hunting is slow and you feel like giving your ears a break. Hopefully now that we’ve crept into late-October we’ll have better results this weekend. If you don’t, just remember: November is only 11 days away! Good luck and stay safe.