A Tale of a Monster Buck With a CVA Accura Rifle by Brady Hartgrave of Manchester, Iowa
Editor’s Note: Most of the time when you tell the same story from two-different perspectives, the reason is there’s a difference of opinion as to what actually happened. However, in this tale told twice in our CVA blogs, you’ll read the story of a grandfather and a grandson who have created the memory of a lifetime that neither one was expecting on a day afield with the CVA Accura at the end of September, 2010.
This deer hunt in September, 2010, was my first deer hunt. My name is Brady Hartgrave, and I’m 10-years old. I was hunting with my grandpa, Tim Williams, at his farm during the youth season in our state. My grandpa told me the time had come for me to take a deer. We were hunting in my grandpa’s hunting shack, 20-feet up in the air. My grandpa just had bought his .50 caliber CVA Accura and thought it would be cool if I took my first deer ever with it. We were up in the shack for at least half an hour when my grandpa saw a doe and a fawn. He told me to get the gun ready to shoot the doe. I put the Accura up on the edge of the hunting shack, but when I looked where the doe was, behind her I could see a big buck. Since my grandpa couldn’t see the buck, he got the binoculars. When he saw the buck, he didn’t say anything. However, he told my mom later after the hunt that when he spotted the buck in the binoculars, he said, “Holy crap, that’s a big one,” to himself. But when he started talking to me, he said it wasn’t a very-big buck and told me not to look at the antlers but instead to look at the buck’s shoulder.
“Brady, this buck is just a little one, but you can take him,” my grandpa said. So, I took three deep
breaths, made sure I wasn’t shaking and aimed right for the buck’s shoulder like Grandpa had told me to do. When I shot him, the buck dropped right where he was standing. Grandpa told me later that the buck was 100-yards away. I was using a riflescope. When I saw the buck go-down and watched him kicking the grass, I was about to pee my pants. Grandpa didn’t know that I’d dropped the deer. Although he said he thought the deer had run away, I knew I’d dropped the buck. I could see the grass moving on the ground when the deer kicked it. We climbed out of the hunting shack, and Grandpa said he wanted to reload the gun. Then if the buck started moving or got-up, I could shoot him again. When we moved over to where the deer was laying, I saw he wasn’t moving. I laid the CVA Accura rifle down, and then my grandpa could see the deer too. I was wearing a backpack, and my grandpa pulled that backpack off. He started hugging and kissing me and all that, and I hugged my grandpa’s neck. I was really amazed, at my grandpa and at the buck deer. Grandpa announced, “Brady, you’ve got a BBD – a big buck down.” A lot of people at my school asked if I was the person who shot that big buck, and I’d answer, “Yeah, that was me.” When a friend of mine who’s been hunting deer much longer than me saw the picture of me with my buck, he said, “Holy crap, that’s a big buck. That’s a buck of a lifetime.”
I’m going to get my buck mounted. Now I want to start hunting with my grandpa some more, but he’s started joking with me and saying, “Brady, I’m not taking you hunting anymore, because I’ve never shot a buck that big.” However, Grandpa doesn’t mean what he’s saying. He’s never even seen that buck on his trail cameras before, and he’s got trail cameras out everywhere on his farm. I keep telling my grandpa, “I got a bigger buck than you, ha, ha, ha!”
My grandpa took his cell phone and started calling a lot of people to tell them about my big deer. My grandma came out to see my buck, and she also couldn’t believe how big it was. The buck weighed about 300 pounds and had 21 points. I think they said he scored 196 points or something on Boone & Crockett.