GLEN JEAN, W.Va. — If you had suggested to Luke Adkins of Glen Jean, W.Va.at the start of October he would kill his biggest buck ever, it’s doubtful he would have believed you. In fact, after he harvested the largest buck he ever saw in person, he’s still having a hard time wrapping his mind around how it all came together.
“This bow season has been a rough one on me. Everything I’ve touched has broken. My tree stand broke and I had two bows break. I was down to my one last option, my sister’s pink crossbow,” Adkins explained on West Virginia Outdoors.
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Adkins lost a string on his compound bow and wound up with it stuck in the bow shop as the season got started. The limb on his crossbow was cracked and he was afraid to take it into the woods. He lamented his luck and his sister offered up her rarely used crossbow, it he was able to overlook the pink color and smaller size.
Adkins hunts in the rugged Beury Mountain Wildlife Management area along the New River. He’s not far from the New River Gorge National Park and Preserve. The area is steep and rugged, but he knew there were potentially nice bucks in the area.
“It’s all riverfront and you walk your hind-end off. The mountains are almost straight up and down. The area where I was was like a bench. It was a little bit flatter than everything else, but it was still steep,” he explained.
What he did not realize was just how fast things would materialize when he got into the area.
“As soon as I got to my tree I was about to hang my tree saddle and a doe came running by. I thought she was acting like something was chasing her. I looked behind her and all I saw was antlers. I wasn’t even sure how big he was, I could just tell from seeing the side of his head he was a shooter,” Adkins explained.

He leveled the crossbow and squeezed the trigger only moments after seeing the buck for the first time.
“He came out and stopped and was standing broadside at about 28 yards. He was looking at her. I didn’t know how big his rack was, but it was plenty big enough for me,” Adkins laughed.
He put the shot on the big buck and worried he had possibly hit a little further back than he had hoped. He found his bolt a few minutes afterward and saw good blood on the shaft. He decided to back out and give the buck a while to expire. He returned about an hour later to begin the slow walk on the blood trail.
“He died probably 45 yards from where I shot him. I had put a perfect shot on him, but man when I got up to him he actually looked fake to me. I couldn’t believe how big he was,” said Adkins who now has no hesitation about using the pink crossbow.
“I took it home and shot it and made sure it was on and the first time I used it I killed the biggest buck I’ve ever seen. I have no problems using that pink crossbow from now on!” he laughed.