[{"@context":"http:\/\/schema.org\/","@type":"BlogPosting","@id":"https:\/\/community.legendarywhitetails.com\/blog\/splitz-a-local-legend\/#BlogPosting","mainEntityOfPage":"https:\/\/community.legendarywhitetails.com\/blog\/splitz-a-local-legend\/","headline":"Splitz: A Local Legend","name":"Splitz: A Local Legend","description":"The year was 2013 and for the first time since 2010, I had no evidence of a buck we had...","datePublished":"2015-12-18","dateModified":"2018-06-12","author":{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/community.legendarywhitetails.com\/author\/hagosto\/#Person","name":"Hector Agosto","url":"https:\/\/community.legendarywhitetails.com\/author\/hagosto\/","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d7bfedbdc5ef3ed8f8df91eb37e1ffbe?s=96&d=mm&r=g","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d7bfedbdc5ef3ed8f8df91eb37e1ffbe?s=96&d=mm&r=g","height":96,"width":96}},"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Legendary Whitetails","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"http:\/\/community.legendarywhitetails.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/logo-legendary-whitetails.png","url":"http:\/\/community.legendarywhitetails.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/logo-legendary-whitetails.png","width":522,"height":226}},"image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/community.legendarywhitetails.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Picture1-e1450466440943.jpg","url":"https:\/\/community.legendarywhitetails.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Picture1-e1450466440943.jpg","height":461,"width":1192},"url":"https:\/\/community.legendarywhitetails.com\/blog\/splitz-a-local-legend\/","about":["Hunting"],"wordCount":2780,"keywords":["Deer","Hunting"],"articleBody":"The year was 2013 and for the first time since 2010, I had no evidence of a buck we had named \u201cSplitz\u201d.\u00a0 No trail cam pics, no sheds, no sightings, no NOTHING!\u00a0 The consensus was that the old timer had finally passed.\u00a0 The timing of Splitz\u2019s disappearance couldn\u2019t have been worse as I had finally achieved permission to hunt a chunk of land he frequented. \u00a0The following blog highlights the five years in which I, along with many others, came to know a local legend by the name of Splitz.\u00a0\u00a0 Deer, especially bucks, rarely live beyond five years old in the wild.\u00a0 Splitz lived to be 9 or 10 according to my best estimates and was a true giant up until the very end.\u00a0 As a hunter, I may never again have the privilege of pursuing a decade-old booner of which I\u2019ve had so much history with.\u00a0Here’s a video showing the legendary buck over the past 6 years. \u00a0The full story and pictures are\u00a0below.Herein lies the timeline of the local legend that was Splitz:The Initial PicturesDuring the summer of 2010, my buddies and I had been proceeding with our normal summer scouting techniques \u2013 running trail cameras and shining.\u00a0 Southeastern Wisconsin has never been lacking in the monster buck category, however, trying to find land to hunt where one of these bruisers lives is a different story.\u00a0 What used to be big ol\u2019 dairy farmland, has now been parceled off into giant housed subdivisions and small parcel property owners.\u00a0 To sum it up, if you are lucky enough to have a buck to hunt like this, so do about 15 other hunters.\u00a0We had been seeing some good bucks around the neighborhood, but nothing like what we were about to see on our trail cameras from the last week in August.\u00a0 My brother, Nick, called me during work to tell me what he saw.\u00a0 Giddy with excitement, all I could really hear was that a freakin\u2019 giant was on cam.\u00a0 Once I got home, I saw it with my own eyes and the dreams of the upcoming season began.\u00a0This is not Splitz, but it was an absolute giant that we got on camera on a different property. \u00a0Unfortunately, he was killed by a vehicle later that year.We showed only our closest buddies because word tends to travel fast and there was no need to enthuse the surrounding hunters.\u00a0 Typical \u2018cocky-talk\u2019 ensued and our hopes were high!\u00a0 Less than a week after living high on the hog from that photo, my cousin Mitch texted me a picture of a potentially even bigger buck on a nearby property.\u00a0 So began the legend of \u201cSplitz\u201d.2010Only one velvet photo was collected of him through the fall.\u00a0 Mitch had been hunting him hard, but unfortunately a smaller buck came in and he had to let an arrow fly (sarcasm – he shot a giant 11 pt.).\u00a0 Once the snow fell, Splitz became a local at my buddy\u2019s back yard feeder and was looking pretty healthy.Here’s the very first picture we got of Splitz. \u00a0My cousin was the first to get it on trail camera that year.Later on that year he showed up on camera in a buddy’s backyard.2011During February, he was still holding strong and we waited for the day when he was supposed to show up with no headgear.\u00a0 Instead, he disappeared again\u2026\u00a0 Once the snow melted, we searched high and low for his sheds, but to no avail.\u00a0 This buck had quite the range! \u00a0From our spotlighting missions to trail camera photos, we knew this guy could be on any of the approximately 25+ properties encompassing his home range.\u00a0Summer came and summer went without any sightings of the big old buck.\u00a0 Fittingly enough, up until Halloween Night, Splitz had remained a ghost.\u00a0 The rut finally brought him out of hiding and he showed up in my buddy\u2019s backyard once again. \u00a0\u00a0He was alive and well, and would remain that way through the rest of the hunting season.Here he is again in the same backyard on Halloween Night the following fall.2012Once again, we eagerly searched for Splitz\u2019s sheds during the spring and once again, the results were the same.Despite not having found his sheds, our hope was restored when he showed back up on camera during July, looking as good as ever.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t for long though, as this proved to be his only trail camera appearance of the season.\u00a0In 2012 he showed up on yet another property.2013\u00a0 Shed hunting season was here once again.\u00a0 After an all-day search of the main property yielded one measly chewed up shed, our excitement was pretty low by the time we got to the last field.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t until our final pass that my buddy Josh found a great looking tall-tined 5-point side, and from there the floodgates opened.\u00a0I found a matching 8-point set a minute later and as we were standing around admiring the sudden success, Josh\u2019s brother, Justin, whips up his binos and takes off running!\u00a0 150+ yards away there was a shiny bright-white object laying in a drainage ditch that seemed out of place.\u00a0 It was one large antler and it once belonged to Splitz!Knowing he survived the hunting season and the winter, we were anxious to see what he would look like during the upcoming season.\u00a0 Unfortunately for us, Splitz once again avoided all cameras throughout the summer and fall.\u00a0 Was he dead?All of these sheds were found within 200 yards of each other and within 5 minutes of one another. \u00a0Splitz is the massive one on the left.Justin with a side from Splitz. \u00a0This is about as obvious as a shed gets. \u00a0It scored 78 inches. \u00a02014No sheds were found (surprise, surprise).\u00a0 We were now pretty certain that the buck had died sometime during the 2013 season, after all he was an estimated 7+ years old.\u00a0 Just as we wrote him off, he showed back up on trail camera like a ghost from thin air.\u00a0 We were baffled.From the dust of a small old food plot, the now 8 \u00bd year old buck reappeared for one single trail camera photo!\u00a0 While he probably scored the most back in 2010, he was certainly no slouch.\u00a0 This buck has turned his split G-1\u2019s, 2\u2019s, and right 3 into main beam mass with a typical 6X6 frame.He wasn\u2019t nearly as big, but it was undoubtedly him.\u00a0 First in August, then again in September as he was shedding velvet.\u00a0 Could this be the year?\u00a0Of course not\u2026once again he vanished.\u00a0\u00a0 Another hunting season went by without a single sighting, but magically, the old timer proved he was still as smart as ever when he showed up on trail camera during a post season survey.Here he is in August of 2014. \u00a0This was the first year I had permission to shoot bucks on this property.And again in September as he’s shedding velvet.2015Shed season was upon us once again and finally we had permission to walk a neighboring farm I suspected Splitz was living.\u00a0 The new property looked promising and sure enough, a half an hour into our search and I was pulling a massive side out of the tangled creek grass. Out came a moss covered beam from what looked to be last year\u2019s shed, it was Splitz!\u00a0 \u00a0While still carrying quite a bit of mass, it was obvious he was on his downswing.The spring and summer came and went \u2013 more food plots, more trail cameras, and still no sightings. . .It was more or less a lucky spot as this antler was covered with creek grass.We found one of his old sheds (from 2013) on a new property that we had a hunch he was frequenting.Then this happened\u2026My wife and I were driving home from our honeymoon when my phone buzzed in the center console.\u00a0 I glanced down and saw that my brother had sent me a trail cam photo of some sort.\u00a0 My wife picked up the phone and said, \u201cIt looks like a moose!\u201dAlready riding an emotional high from just being married, I now needed to see what this buck looked like.\u00a0 Luckily, we were just pulling into a local winery for a quick tour on the way home when this picture came through and thank goodness we were stopped because this pic would have made any hunter run their truck off the road.Here is the picture my brother sent me that renewed my dreams of hunting Splitz. \u00a0Clearly the date and time are off.Upon first glance my jaw dropped and I thought to myself, \u201cWow! What lucky hunter gets to chase him?\u201dI texted my brother back and asked, \u201cWho? And Where?\u201dIt wasn\u2019t until after we got home that he told me who it was.\u00a0 To my disbelief, the photo came from the backyard of a neighboring property I hunt!\u00a0 Now I was interested.\u00a0 What at first was a quick glance and admiration of a great whitetail, now turned to complete zoomed-in dissection of the rack.Who was this deer with stickers, splits, and a drop tine?\u00a0 Having run multiple cameras for multiple years on the adjacent 350 acres, there\u2019s not many bucks I don\u2019t recognize, and certainly not one of this caliber.\u00a0 The closer I looked the more features I started to recognized \u2013 first the bladed left brow, then the split G2, then the 6×6 frame, and finally the overall shape of the rack.No, it couldn\u2019t be.\u00a0 How in the world would a buck that\u2019s 9 or 10 years old all of a sudden blow up from what he was last year?\u00a0 Maybe it was one of Spitz\u2019s offspring I thought.\u00a0 I looked at the sheds and previous 5 years\u2019 worth of trail cam pics and everything was way too similar to be a different buck.\u00a0Each angle he showed us was more impressive than the next!Indeed, Splitz was back and bigger than ever! Not only was he back, but archery season was just two weeks away.While the upcoming season was filled with hopeful dreams of encountering \u201cSplitz\u201d for the first time in a treestand, past seasons held my expectations in check.\u00a0 Since 2010, his home range had shrunk dramatically.\u00a0 What once covered seemingly half a town was now down to half a mile of which his western edge barely touched the eastern border of the property I hunted.Not only did his home range shrink, but his typical pattern had him showing up for week in early September and then not again until late season.\u00a0 With this information, I knew he was going to be nearly impossible to kill.\u00a0This is what every hunter dreams of…After several unsuccessful early season sits and no recent trail cam pics of Splitz, I knew I would have to wait until the rut or even more likely, the late-season before I\u2019d have a chance at seeing him.\u00a0 Fortunately for him, another mature buck consumed my tag before ever laying eyes on him.\u00a0 Could he make it another year?In ironic fashion, the demise of Splitz came to me the same way in which all my excitement began this past summer . . . via a picture message.\u00a0 The moment I dreaded for the past 5 years had finally come with someone else holding the rack of this legendary whitetail.\u00a0Don with the legendary 10 year old buck! \u00a0The picture doesn’t do it justice as it ended up with a rough gross score of 174.The \u201csomeone else\u201d actually happened to be Don, a family friend and accomplished hunter.\u00a0 For this I am grateful because I got to see the wise old whitetail in person and take the time to reflect on how much he was part of everything I did on that property.To be honest, I wasn\u2019t upset.\u00a0 Whether it was knowing he was nearly impossible to kill on the property I hunted, or knowing he would have to survive yet another season before getting another chance at him, I was just happy to know how the story finally ended.\u00a0 I mean this buck had been roaming the wild for 10 years!\u00a0 Just think back to what you\u2019ve done in your past 10 years, and all the while this buck was out surviving winter after winter, hunter after hunter, coyote after coyote, and car after car.\u00a0 Truly an unbelievable animal he was."},{"@context":"http:\/\/schema.org\/","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https:\/\/community.legendarywhitetails.com\/#breadcrumbitem","name":"Legendary Whitetail's Blog"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https:\/\/community.legendarywhitetails.com\/blog\/splitz-a-local-legend\/#breadcrumbitem","name":"Splitz: A Local Legend"}}]}]