SUMMERSVILLE, W.Va. — Nicholas County hunter Steve Wilson killed a trophy deer earlier this hunting season, but it wasn’t the kind you normally read about on this page or other hunting publications. Wilson’s deer didn’t have a mega-rack with 8 inch G2’s or antler bases the size of a pop can.
No, the deer he’s calling “special” won’t be recorded in the Pope and Young record book or live on in Boone and Crockett lore. In fact, Steve’s trophy deer isn’t even a buck. It’s a run of the mill, mature doe. But that’s okay with him because it’s a deer which took a LOT of effort.
“I had been hunting with a crossbow for a few years and I had gotten bored with it,” Wilson explained in a conversation for West Virginia Outdoors. “I was trying to decide if I wanted to go back to a compound bow or give a recurve a try.”
He had several conversations with friends about his choices. He said some of them had enjoyed the recurve challenge. The encouraged him to consider it. Soon, Wilson said he had made up his mind to give the recurve a try.
“I had shot a recurve a couple of times in the past, but just playing around and nothing really serious. But it was a new skill I wanted to learn. I thought if I could kill a deer, it would be great,” Wilson explained.
He had the recurve made and fitted to his body style back in the spring and spent the entire summer getting used to it. He estimated letting loose more than a thousand arrows.
“Shooting a recurve is a lot different than a compound or anything else. I was trying to learn to shoot instinctively. There’s really no physical aiming, just draw back, focus on the target, and release. Over time doing that hundreds of times, eventually your mind starts working with your body and your groups start getting smaller and smaller,” ‘he said.
Steve said learning to shoot consistently was the biggest obstacle and once he had that part of it down, he was ready.
“Starting off I made one of the rookie mistakes by probably getting a recurve that was a little bit too heavy for me. But being cheap, I didn’t want to have to buy new limbs before the season. I didn’t want to shoot anything less than 45 pounds, so that’s what I started shooting with,” he explained.
He picked out a spot on a white oak flat on the end of a point. He was aware of a blowdown tree which would provide perfect cover if he could get there before daylight. But in the dark on October 11th, he was unable to find the tree he was seeking. With daylight coming fast, he found a large maple tree with a hollow space in the truck and moved inside. He expected to easily see his blow down when daylight arrived and he would quickly slip to it.
“As daylight started to crack, I could hear a couple of racoons were messing around and it turned out I was sitting about 60-yards up the hill from where I wanted to be,” he explained.
So he stood up to walk to his blowdown tree, but quickly caught site of a couple of deer moving through the brush toward him and not far away. He was fearful he may have blown it when he stood up, but fate was on his side.
“I don’t know why, but they saw me and started acting nervous, but then they got over it and kept walking toward me,” he shared.
The deer made a U-turn and a wide berth around his location, but then the lead doe broke away from the pack and gave Wilson the opportunity he was waiting for.
“That lead doe cut to the right and walked directly in front of me, broadside, and stopped at 12-yards. I drew back and tried to find my spot and let the arrow go. I hit it a little more to the right than I wanted to. She took off with the arrow in her,”
But she didn’t go far, and when Wilson finally tracked her down, his quest was complete.
“A huge thank you to those who helped me out with this endeavor and provided me with much needed advice,” he shared on social media.
Wilson had a nourishing trophy to feed his family and the satisfaction of finishing a personal challenge without a single antler point. In reality, he had found the essence of why most people choose to hunt in that single, mature doe on a mountainside in Nicholas County.