Unknow Speaker: To respect the game animals we hunt, it’s a hunter’s responsibility to make a clean, killing shot, even under pressure.
It’s safe to say few deer hunters have ever been under more pressure than Luke Brewster was last November, when he made a perfect shot on a very special animal. Luke, a Marine Corps veteran, was ready when the opportunity appeared 26 yards away because he had been practicing with his bow all summer and imagining that very moment.
This is the story of the new world-record non-typical buck and the steady hunter who released the arrow.
Justin Cearlock: Back over my right shoulder is where I first got the pictures of Mufasa in 2014.
I got pictures of him in late November and again, I think, in early December. He was over the same scrape both times, both at night, just a couple of times in and out. We could tell he was spindly, didn’t have a lot of mass, and was a young deer. That was it for 2014.
In 2015, he showed up again. That first picture of him in late December made him look like an incredible eight-point, but we never laid eyes on him.
In 2016, which would be the year that we have the shed from, he came right in and gave us a full front view. It was just, “Oh my gosh, we’ve got a special deer here.”
I think it was the first year Luke was coming down, so we showed him pictures when he got here. I texted him and said, “This is Mufasa. That’s what we’re going to call him from now on.”
Johnny Davis: I’m Johnny Davis, part owner of Backwoods Outfitters. That year, we actually knew what deer this was. We had camera pictures and everything of the deer, and we were positioning ourselves, trying to get a chance at him.
Justin Cearlock: The next year, I really started prepping with food plots. Of course, he added a lot of junk on his left side that year. I remember getting those pictures in late October.
The last Friday in October, I came out here to hunt and happened to look up. I could tell there was a good buck coming at me. I didn’t know who it was yet, but then I saw all the junk, and right then I knew it was obviously the deer.
I did everything right. He came back, stopped, I let the arrow fly, and I missed bad. I kept my cool, and I still missed bad. That was tough.
The following year, which would have been 2018, it was the latest we ever got his picture. We checked all the cameras and pulled the cards, and there he was. He was just a world-class giant.
When he showed up on the property, I became very nervous. I had never shot at a buck like that. Nobody has ever shot a buck like that. I had never even shot at a 170-inch buck, so it was very nerve-racking to be hunting him.
Luke Brewster: I left my home in Virginia and met up with Justin. He had just gotten off work, and we went around pulling cards from the cameras. By that time, we knew Mufasa was on the property, and we came up with a game plan.
Justin Cearlock: That morning, I picked first. I went to the stand that I had hung and really thought would be the stand he was killed out of.
Johnny Davis: You have to remember, we didn’t see the deer that year. The first sighting we had of him was the day he was shot. We knew he was huge from the year before, but when the guy was describing the deer, we thought he was sensationalizing it a little bit. We knew there was a big one in there, but we had no idea.
Justin Cearlock: That morning passed, and I think it was me, Justin, and Luke who went to breakfast. It was Ron’s turn to pick first, and he picked the stand I had been in that morning. Luke was second.
Luke Brewster: I don’t know what made him decide, but he ended up picking one quite a bit farther south. He picked a stand that nobody had hunted for, I think, five years or something.
Will Brantley: So this is the tree — the magic tree. It’s been here a while. The steps have kind of grown into the tree.
I snuck in here around noon and had been sitting there for about four hours. The first deer I saw were a couple of does. What happened ffter that?
Luke Brewster: I pulled out my binoculars and watched them for a while. Then I brought my binoculars down, and there he was, about 30 yards in front of me.
Will Brantley: He was already right here, moving this way?
There were definitely tense moments. For a split second,
Luke Brewster: I kind of froze. I was like, “All right, I’ve got to do something.”
So I hung up my binoculars and slowly grabbed my bow, keeping my eye on him. He was just making steady progress through the woods, going toward that scrape.
By the time I had my bow in my hand, he was already hitting the scrape. I had ranged it when I first got in the stand, and it was 26 yards.
He was hitting that scrape and started licking the branch above him. By that time, I had gone to full draw.
Will Brantley: You can still see the old scrape there. He was using this dead branch as a licking branch. He was scraping there, and I was at full draw, looking right through there. He didn’t have a clue I was in the tree.
Luke Brewster: I squeezed my release, and the shot went off. It made a loud thump when it hit him, and I thought I had hit his shoulder blade. I thought I had hit him a little high, so I was feeling a little sick and nervous.
I had been practicing all summer. I had been out shooting groups and doing everything I needed to do to get ready for that exact moment.
Justin Cearlock: I think I just texted, “I just shot Mufasa.” I’d have to look back, but I think it was just, “I just shot Mufasa.”
The first text back was, “Are you serious?” It was one of those moments where it was like, holy cow, it happened.
Luke Brewster: I found my arrow laying up here. Part of it was broken off, and I had good blood. I knew it was a good shot.
I was just kind of glassing left to right, and all of a sudden, I saw a big rack sticking out. I could see him laying over there from here.
When I walked up, I noticed the fresh break. At that time, I knew which side it was — the big club side. I followed the blood trail, and it led me to this tree. You can actually see the gash on the tree where he ran into it.
The top of his tine hit right there. His club hit around here somewhere, and that’s about where he dropped.
When the other guys got down there, everyone gathered around the deer. Everyone was shocked, just as shocked as I was. The first thing they did when I came down was give me a big hug.
Justin Cearlock We were all happy for Luke that it happened, and that he had the opportunity to make a great shot and execute. It was pretty cool.
Johnny Davis: Deer hunting is a big part of your life when it means that much to you. It’s like you were right there. It’s like your neighbor won the lottery, but you were right there and part of it. That’s why it meant a lot to me that I was close to it.
Justin Cearlock Every time you see it, whether it’s in a magazine or on social media, I’ve said multiple times that it happened to a great guy.
Luke Brewster: It was pretty exciting to put a deer of that magnitude down, but it was also pretty sad — not just for the guys who didn’t put their tag on it, but for me as well. We all knew we weren’t going to have that excitement every year of chasing him and trying to figure out what he was going to do next.
