This avid bowhunter also uses a homemade liquid cover scent she sprays on her head before hunting. She said she wears a Scent-Lok coat and pants, but doesn’t wear a hood. That’s why she sprays her head with a cover scent.

“I always pay attention to wind direction when deciding where to hunt,” Cheryl said. “I go to a stand where the wind will be in my favor. I have 20 stands to choose from.”

Cheryl is frustrated she was unable to get the biggest buck to her credit with an arrow from her crossbow.

“I saw that 14-pointer three times during a two-week period in bow season,” she said. “He presented me with good possibilities each time I saw him, but I was never able to get a shot at him any of those times.”

The first time she saw him, a doe he was with walked by in the open, but the buck took a trail in the thick stuff. The second time she saw him was the closest she came to getting a shot. The whitetail was practically under the rear of the stand Cheryl was in that day. The buck was rubbing a bush while Cheryl was turned on the stand, ready to take the shot when his vitals came into the open. She had an opening to the rear of his body, but she was not about to take a gut shot. He turned and walked away without presenting a killing shot.

The last time she saw the whitetail when she had a bow in her hands, the doe he was following came out into the open to break ice on some nearby water to take a drink. The buck hung back in thick cover, refusing to expose himself in the open.

When gun season opened on Nov. 15, Cheryl exchanged her crossbow for a 20-gauge Remington pump. It was the evening of Nov. 26, 2003, when she saw the buck for the fourth time. She was hunting a stand among some oak trees at the time.

“I had does and fawns scattered around in front of me eating acorns,” Cheryl said. “Then I noticed a new deer that had slowly filtered its way into view. It caught my eye when it flicked its tail. Soon afterward, it turned and I saw the big antlers. I waited for his shoulder to clear a tree and fired. He dropped on the spot.

“That’s when I first got a cell phone,” she continued. “I called my husband to tell him about my success. Tim got in my car, rolled the windows down, put in a Ted Nugent tape and played ‘Fred Bear’ as he drove to where I was to help me with the buck. I had an overwhelming feeling of gratitude and accomplishment when I got that buck, even though I didn’t get it with my crossbow.”

Cheryl said she has been concentrating on hunting mature bucks for about seven years now. She had taken about two-dozen yearling bucks before that. She now routinely passes up yearling bucks with small racks. She knows of four yearling bucks she passed up numerous times during 2006 that made it through gun season. Hunters on neighboring parcels sometimes shoot bucks she lets go, but the sanctuary on their property reduces the chances that all of the yearlings will be killed. The surviving yearlings are a spikehorn, two 6s and an 8-pointer.

“I named the 8-point Johnny Appleseed because I always saw him when I hunted a stand by some apple trees,” Cheryl said. “I knew he was a yearling because he had a small rack and he was kind of dumb. He was chummy with all of the other deer.”

Nobody will be surprised if Johnny catches an arrow this fall!