Reed City's Jason May talks about his successful deer hunting season. (Herald Review photo/John Raffel)
BIG RAPIDS -- It was a unique hunting season for Reed City's Jason May, who took second in the rifle division of The Pioneer's Big Buck contest.
The 35-year-old hunter bagged two impressive bucks on opening day in the Upper Peninsula on public land.
May was using a .300 Weatherby mag for both of his bucks. The first one he shot around 10:45 a.m. It was an 11-pointer with 18-inch rack span. The second one came later in the day as a 10-pointer with 20-inch rack spread.
He won a $100 gift certificate good toward food plot seed donated by Big Rapids Farm & Garden.
"This year, archery season was not kind to me," he said at the Sportsman Dinner on Jan. 28 in Big Rapids. "I decided to go up north to federal land. It was probably the least amount of work I had in hunting this year. One weekend I was up there to do some scouting and had one decent buck on trail cam. That was not the one that I shot.
"I shot them both opening morning. I saw both deer for about a total of three seconds. They were coming in on doe (scent) I had used. I had a great shot on both of them, one double lung and the other double shoulder. It's a day I'll never forget. I took them both back to my blind. It took me about four hours to get them back to my truck. That's swamp hunting. Actually, it's my favorite kind of hunting."
