Top Velvet Buck by Bow!

According to Pope & Young records, Jim Kostroski’s monster 17-pointer from Minnesota is the archery world’s highest-scoring velvet whitetail of all time. Photo by Pat Reeve.

The 2003 season was filled with great bucks, but few of them can match this one’s historical impact. Here’s how a dedicated bowhunter arrowed the world’s top velvet buck by bow!

By Scott Bestul

For whitetail fanatics, 2003 might well go down as the “Year of the World Record.” The most obvious reason for such a designation is, of course, the famous non-typical that young Tony Lovstuen shot in southern Iowa with his muzzleloader last September. That monster is apparently the world’s top hunter-killed non-typical ever; in fact, as this issue goes to press, his 319 4/8-inch entry score is being checked by a panel of Boone and Crockett measurers.

The Lovstuen buck is one of the all-time greats, regardless of his exact score. But over two weeks before Tony downed that giant, another world-record whitetail was tagged in the Midwest.

The hunt for this Minnesota buck, which now reigns as the largest non-typical velvet whitetail ever shot by a bowhunter, shares many similarities with the Lovstuen buck: a multi-year quest; some close calls and near misses; a teamwork approach to unraveling the buck’s pattern; and, in the end, an emotional roller-coaster ride for the lucky hunter.