Erick Organ shot this 13 point buck scor­ing 200 ³⁄₈ gross 193 ²⁄₈ net Typical

Here’s the sto­ry behind this Dodge Coun­ty giant, and anoth­er tro­phy south­east buck tak­en the same day, in the same neighborhood!

By Javier Serna
Assis­tant Edi­tor — Min­neso­ta Out­door News

West Con­cord, Minn. — Erick Organ and oth­er adults had been look­ing out for their kids hunt­ing the open­er of Minnesota’s firearms sea­son. One of his nephews, age 10, was on his first deer hunt. Anoth­er nephew, age 11, was on his sec­ond hunt. And Organ’s son, 16, also was hunt­ing that day.

“We put them in the three best places,” said Organ, 44. “We had them placed on some pret­ty good stands, think­ing that would be where the deer would come.

“He came by me, instead,” said Organ, who con­tact­ed Out­door News after see­ing a buck adorn­ing the Dec. 13, 2019, issue’s front page. That deer was a poten­tial record-book ani­mal that green-scored 180, gross. The sto­ry of that buck, tak­en by Pat Shel­ton, was chron­i­cled on Page 14 of that edition.

That Dodge Coun­ty buck, Organ sur­mised by using Google Maps, was killed only about 2.9 miles from where he killed his, and on the same day.

Ear­li­er this week, after the required 60-day dry­down peri­od, Organ’s 13-point­er scored 1932⁄8 in accor­dance with Boone and Crock­ett Club scoring.

“It was by far the biggest one I have ever shot,” Organ said, men­tion­ing hav­ing killed some 150-class deer in the past.

Organ said his two nephews did see bucks that morn­ing. His son did not.

“See­ing deer is not an issue,” Organ said. “At their age, they were hop­ing to get a crack at any size buck. They saw them but didn’t get the oppor­tu­ni­ty to get one. I think they still had fun.”

Organ cer­tain­ly did.

It was a quar­ter past 9 a.m. when the big buck came by.

“I was sit­ting in the deer stand, look­ing off to the south,” he said. “That was where the biggest chunk of woods was that I could see. To the east, it was a plowed field. He came over the top of the first ridge.”

Organ knew.

“I looked at him for two sec­onds, and I knew it was a dandy,” he said. “The first time I shot, he was 40 to 45 yards away.”

Organ spoke about a slight bit of dif­fi­cul­ty work­ing his bar­rel through one of the win­dows of his blind, but he hit both lungs of the ani­mal with the shot. Still, the buck kept com­ing toward him.

He got anoth­er clear shot at 25 yards, which went through both of the deer’s front legs, and the buck collapsed.

“I got over to him and could just tell he was a big buck,” he said. He said he sent a pho­to to his son and his father in-law. One of his nephews who was hunt­ing near­by came over to see the deer.

“We sat and talked about it for a while,” Organ said. “They want­ed to see (the deer), even though it was the begin­ning of their hunt.”

It also turned out that his broth­er-in-law and anoth­er nephew had seen the buck.

“Where we hunt is kind of bluff coun­try, with big lime­stone cliffs that go into the flats by the riv­er,” he said. “There are big fun­nels there to get up or down to the riv­er. That’s where my broth­er-in-law was sit­ting. He’d actu­al­ly saw the deer with his son. But his son was using a .410 shot­gun and the deer was prob­a­bly 70 or 80 yards away. He wasn’t com­fort­able with tak­ing a shot at the deer, espe­cial­ly with his son being 10.”

The deer was trotting.

“He was in rut,” Organ said.

And, yes, the adults pon­dered what might have hap­pened had the young man, in the first two hours of his first hunt, had killed the beast of a buck.

Might it have ruined the young man on deer hunting?

“That’s what we said,” Organ said with a laugh. “The first two hours in the deer stand and he saw the biggest deer I’ve ever seen in Minnesota.”

Organ called his taxi­der­mist, who also did some light mea­sur­ing of the antlers using Scotch tape. Some neigh­bors also came by. They’d seen the buck on trail cam­era images.

Nor­mal­ly, Organ said he only bowhunts on oth­er property.

“I only gun hunt at my in-laws (where this all took place) so we can all be togeth­er,” he said. “I had nev­er seen this deer. The neigh­bors had him on a cou­ple of pics. One neigh­bor had the sheds from the year before. It had grown since the year before. I was in a euphor­ic state.”

The typ­i­cal antlers grossed 1991⁄8 inch­es and net­ted 1932⁄8 after deduc­tions, with a 19-inch inside spread. It had some long points, the longest mea­sur­ing 131⁄8 inches.

Organ said he was sur­prised the deer came so close to the deer killed by Pat Shel­ton, of Min­neapo­lis, and fea­tured in a Decem­ber edi­tion of Out­door News. Both men killed their deer on oppo­site sides of Berne, a small, unin­cor­po­rat­ed township.

Tay­lor Bestor, of the Blufflands White­tails Asso­ci­a­tion, said it’s remark­able that two bucks of that stature would be killed such a short dis­tance from one anoth­er, and on the same day.

“Ear­ly Novem­ber – that gets bucks on their feet,” Bestor said, not­ing that the deer were both killed just out­side of where antler point restric­tions had been part of the reg­u­la­tions for years – until this year. They are prob­a­bly prac­tic­ing (APR) there anyway.”

Organ said on his father-in-law’s prop­er­ty, he and his broth­er-in-law shoot only larg­er bucks. Now that there are young kids hunt­ing, though, they shoot what­ev­er they choose to, and his father-in-law kills bucks of all sizes.

What­ev­er the case, the area grows some big specimens.

“A cou­ple of dandies get shot, and now I am a local celebri­ty,” Organ said, chuck­ling. “There are only about 200 peo­ple here where I work, so it doesn’t take too much.”