Fam­i­ly cen­tu­ry farm pro­duces pos­si­ble boon­er of a buck Dodge Coun­ty typ­i­cal a poten­tial B&C booker

By Rob Drieslein
Out­door News

West Con­cord, Minn. — Patrick Shelton’s open­ing morn­ing of the Zone 3A firearms deer sea­son began with one of those Murphy’s Law moments that almost caused him to throw in the towel.

But 30 min­utes lat­er, in a turn of events that should inspire any rank-and-file hunter, Shel­ton was stand­ing over a poten­tial Boone & Crock­ett typ­i­cal white­tail 10-point buck.

Hunt­ing the fam­i­ly cen­tu­ry farm east of West Con­cord, which lies west of Rochester in Dodge Coun­ty on Nov. 9, 30-year-old Shel­ton found his ground blind cov­ered in snow. In clear­ing it off, he end­ed up near­ly col­laps­ing the blind and cov­er­ing him­self and his shot­gun in snow.

“I was real­ly loud and bang­ing around, clean­ing every­thing up,” Shel­ton said. “I was sit­ting there with the top open, fig­ur­ing, well, this morn­ing is shot. Might as well eat lunch.”

But he stuck it out and spent the next 20 min­utes clean­ing off his 20-gauge Rem­ing­ton and scope. Ten min­utes lat­er, hands freez­ing and watch­ing a decoy he’d placed 30 yards out, an amaz­ing deer approached.

“I lean back, then all of a sud­den, here he comes – 25 yards on my right from a pond by a lit­tle bluff,” Shel­ton recalled. “He’s mov­ing and starts up a lit­tle hill about 45 yards away.”

Unwill­ing to let the deer move any far­ther, Shel­ton tried a quick grunt from his mouth. The sound and decoy gave the buck pause, and Shel­ton didn’t miss the oppor­tu­ni­ty, mak­ing a clean heart shot.

Did he remain patient and wait the rec­om­mend­ed 20 min­utes before leav­ing his stand?

“No, I was up pret­ty fast,” he said. “I saw some spray then tracked him in a 150-yard half-cir­cle. It hit the per­fect spot and he went down fast.”

A Vio­la taxi­der­mist scored the buck at 180 gross and 175 net, which puts it in con­tention after the 60-day dry­down peri­od for the Boone & Crock­ett Record­book. The all-time score min­i­mum for the B&C Records of North Amer­i­can Big Game is 170 for a typ­i­cal whitetail.

The large-bod­ied deer tipped a scale at 225 pounds dressed.

A part­ner and direc­tor at Cur­rent Res­i­dent, a Min­neapo­lis-based video pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny, Shel­ton had hunt­ed Col­orado for mule deer with his dad, broth­ers, and uncle just the week before. He’s shot muleys but this was his first white-tailed buck.

“I missed a decent mule deer the week pri­or in Col­orado – the only one in our group who didn’t shoot a deer, and I was a lit­tle ticked about that,” Shel­ton said. “But I guess I got some redemption.

“And to get this on our fam­i­ly prop­er­ty, well I wouldn’t trade it for the world,” he said.

Found­ed by his great-grand­fa­ther, Frank Shel­ton, the 90-acre prop­er­ty received its cen­tu­ry-farm sta­tus in 2017, he said. Patrick said his father, Mike, who was hunt­ing the same morn­ing a cou­ple hun­dred yards away, was “beside him­self” to see a tro­phy of this buck’s cal­iber come from the fam­i­ly farm.

Read­ers can see a shoul­der mount of Shelton’s buck at the 2020 Out­door News Deer and Turkey Clas­sic, March 13–15 at Can­ter­bury Park in Shakopee. And be sure to stop by the Blufflands White­tails booth No. 518.