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Special to Outdoors Weekly - Buck Fever entry
Jason Lybeck shot this 11-point buck on Nov. 9 near the Minnesota River.

I was sitting in my stand at about 7 am. It was rather cold, and the forecast said that there would be some snow. I sat alertly in my stand and at 8:30 I heard a buck grunting from across the river. At this point in the year you must understand, I have spent nearly 100 hours in a tree stand. I spent a decent amount of money traveling to Canada, and ended up passing two P&Y bucks only to go home empty-handed. So this time I was going to make sure that any P&Y buck within my range was going to fall to my arrow. There I am sitting towards the river, and I see a wake coming across the river. Not in the direction that a wake would normally travel, but a wake that is traveling perpendicular to the shore. I look more intently at the source, and there was a deer. I couldn't believe my eyes... A deer was swimming across the river towards me! I looked even closer and I realized that it was a doe. Darn it! I heard another grunt. There he was swimming across the river after the doe, grunting the whole way. The current was pushing him more towards me. He ended up coming ashore right in front of me only 25 yards away, but he was standing behind the willows just offshore - I had no shot. I waited intently and stood very slowly so that he wouldn't see me. He was moving towards a blowdown, and the doe that was slightly upstream of me (the one that led him across the river). He stood for about 2 minutes in the blowdown which seemed like an eternity. As he started to move out, I drew back. He was now 15 yards away and he turned straight at me. I thought for sure that he would see me but continued on right up to the scrape that was only 10 yards from the stand. He was quartering towards me but I still had no shot. I waited for him to turn and after about a minute, he turned broadside and the arrow left my rest. The 11-pointer darted ahead and stopped at about 40 yards to look back, I knew then he was going down. He staggered a bit and fell onto his side. I grabbed my cell phone out of my pocket and called my hunting partner to tell him what had happened. It was unreal, and a buck that I will never forget. He grossed 134 P&Y inches, and will no doubt be going up on the wall. His spread was 16.75 inches, and he had G3's that were nearly 9 inches. This is not the biggest buck that I have shot but the story is a wonderful one. - Jason Lybeck