Macie Day, 30, of Newburgh didn’t make the Big Buck Club, but she was close.
Her eight-point buck weighed 186 pounds when she tagged it at Village Market in Carmel.
But Day, mother of Emma, 5, and 3-year-old twins Camden and Kaylie, shot her deer, gutted it and loaded it in a pickup truck while her husband Bryan was deployed in the Air Force’s active guard reserve.
Day had experience hunting for black-tail deer in Napa County in California, but the one she shot on Thanksgiving morning in Newburgh was her first white-tail buck. She also shot a doe last year in Maine.
She said her grandparents’ tractor barn in California has generations of antlers hanging from the rafters.
The couple bought 43 acres of land in Newburgh seven years ago. They did some preparations for hunting, like planting food plots to attract deer in the off-season, making trails through their property and establishing ground blinds overlooking the fields.
On Thanksgiving morning, Day sat for about an hour, then used her doe bleat call to see if she could interest any bucks. She soon saw the white of some antlers, then the neck and body of the buck.
Day shot him in the neck from 200 yards with her 7mm-08 Remington.
She wasn’t sure if the buck had fled, although she said she didn’t see him leave. It turned out that he had dropped where he was shot.
She immediately texted her husband, but the message was garbled because she was shaking so much, she said.
Day took a picture of the dead deer and sent it to her husband. Because the reception was so poor where he was deployed, it took 10 minutes for the photo to reach him and some of his friends, who were eagerly waiting to see it.
“It was nice to have him involved however he could,” Day said.
Her husband also hunts, but didn’t have a chance to get his deer this year.
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Day drove into the field with her truck, which also carried her three children and her mother-in-law Pamela Day. Macie Day gutted the deer, then dragged him about 75 yards to the truck.
She backed the truck up to a slope, dragged the deer up the slope and put a ratchet strap around the buck’s chest so she could have a good handle to help her load him. She pulled the deer into the back of the truck, with some help from Pamela Day in the final steps.
After tagging the deer, Macie Day took it to a family member’s house where she had help cutting it up and processing it.
“We go through a lot of grind and stew meat. Backstrap and tenderloins stay separate of course,” she said.
She said that Sherm O’Brien Taxidermy of Palmyra would do a head and shoulder mount of the deer.
Her children were excited about Mom’s deer. Her 3-year-old son was especially happy about the prospect of deer sausage.
“We are teaching the kids where meat comes from and to be sufficient on their own when they get to the age where they can,” Day said.
Being part of a successful hunt brings that message home, she said.
As for her own experience with the hunt, Day said it was good to see their goals for their property become reality.
“It’s kind of cool to see things go full circle from working on the land to harvesting a buck,” she said.
