Well, you need luck and a lot of it.
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Seriously, though... I can't begin to emphasize how much influence 'luck' actually has in all of this phenomena about killing 200" whitetails.
First, you must get lucky enough to have a 200" buck nearby. Secondly, you must get lucky enough to have him choose to enter your farm. Thirdly, you must get lucky enough for him to show up on your farm in daylight while you're hunting. Lastly, you must get lucky enough to have him come within range of you and for you to get a good shot off. Luck, luck, luck, luck, more luck, a little luck, a lot of luck, even more luck, and oh yeah, luck.
200" whitetails are hard to come by. We've been fortunate enough to have 3 known 200" bucks to enter into our farms and have chances. We killed one. We didn't kill 2 others. That's a .333 batting average, which actually isn't bad, but one buck gave us two encounters, one in 2018 and one in 2019, so let's say four encounters... that's batting .250 on 200" whitetails. Two times were they in bow range of one of my hunters, so we are batting .500 since we did kill one. All things considered, we've done well with it. Yet, it's basically luck that controls this up until the shot.
Let's take a hypothetical 200" buck and use him for this question/scenario: A 200" buck is nearby and potentially on your farm or will be soon. During the course of the rut, he will run by how many trees or spots you could put a blind? 1,000? 5,000? Who knows. What I do know is this, you just have to be in one of them. That's luck right there. Period.
I could try to write a post claiming to be the Great White Hunter finding and killing 200" whitetails, but in all honesty, killing a 200" whitetail is mostly luck. I know there are a lot of hunters and professional hunters who ego trip the heck out of this topic for pleasure and financial gain. Don't let them pull the wool over your eyes. You can do a lot of things to improve your farm, have the best setups, the best food plots, the best bedding areas, the best sanctuaries, the best entrance & exit routes, the best water sources, and the best age structure & genetics around. Still, it comes down to luck. Lee Lakosky has killed more 200" bucks in the last three years than he has his entire time in Iowa (> 15 years). Why? Luck. Yes, he maintained his farms as well as anyone, arguably better than Mark Drury. He invested how many hundreds of thousands of dollars into his hunting and farming operations to kill monster whitetails? Did he improve his odds? Arguably so. Yet, when it comes down to it, it is luck. Not a single thing they did guaranteed a sighting let alone a shot at one of these 200" bucks.
Again, first, you must get lucky enough to have a 200" buck nearby. Secondly, you must get lucky enough to have him choose to enter your farm. Thirdly, you must get lucky enough for him to show up on your farm in daylight while you're hunting. Lastly, you must get lucky enough to have him come within range of you and for you to get a good shot off. Luck, luck, luck, luck, more luck, a little luck, a lot of luck, even more luck, and oh yeah, luck.
If you take a guy like Mark Drury and a guy like Lee Lakosky, the greatest whitetail hunters arguably ever in the history of hunting deer, give them hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars in revenue and investments, they're bound to have better land and improved hunting possibilities. Yet, they are still possibilities at that point. They still need luck to be on their side at the end of the day. That's the fun of hunting free-range whitetails like they do. Again, they are the best deer hunters ever. I see so many people get "butt hurt" about their bucks... "They're high fence"... "They're baiting".... "They're buying high-fence bucks and putting them into the free-range population"... Holy cow... Give me a break. That's just stupidity and jealousy.... which is all derived from one's ego. They bust their hind ends to make the best of what they have, to build upon what they have, in hopes of killing more 200" whitetails. They've both done it. They are guru's no doubt, but they still had luck on their side which could have went the other way. You just never know. You can do a lot to try and improve your odds, but yet, the unknown is what is exciting, the possibilities are exciting, the potential is exciting, and that's why we all try to find, hunt, and kill big deer, especially 200" whitetails in southern Iowa. We just need luck on our side.
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