Good Things Come to Those…
By Dick Ellis
Rob Gramoll hadn’t seen a deer during the opening weekend of the Wisconsin deer season. After taking off of work from his Milwaukee job Friday before the opener, he headed north to the Lyndon Station area to hunt family property but didn’t let the no-deer blues interfere with plans to be right back in the saddle after a short work week.
“My boss, Jerry Shesler, has property not far from me in Juneau County, and we headed back on Thanksgiving night,” Gramoll said. We stayed in a trailer on my land, hunted the morning, saw nothing, and headed over to his 90 acres. His brother had shot a doe on the land earlier.”
 |
 |
Although Gramoll said he knows hunting doesn’t guarantee success or even seeing deer, he said seeing no deer after several days in the field was discouraging. He and his hunting partner agreed that they would sit again for much of the day Saturday, but the truck would be packed and ready for the trip home Saturday night if the trend of experiencing virtually no deer activity continued over the next day.
Gramoll, 30, headed to a permanent stand 12 feet off the ground in bright sunshine with temperatures in the mid-30s. The plan was for Sheslar to follow 30 minutes later to his own stand with the hope that he might kick any bedded deer between the two hunters toward Gramoll. The stands were chosen from several on the property with consideration of the wind direction.
“I never saw or heard Jerry come in to his stand,” Gramoll said. “But I did hear branches cracking to my left and turned to get a glimpse of a buck with a very big rack at about 75 yards in thick brush. I remember thinking, ‘it’s about time I’m seeing a big rack.’ But I think he busted me at the same time and headed into rough terrain.”
 |
 |
Despite the clutter, Gramoll was able to bring his Remington semiautomatic .30-06 to his shoulder, find the buck in the scope, and squeezed off the shot with the crosshairs on the heart area. He believed the buck went down and died on the shot, gave the situation some time, and abandoned the stand to begin the recovery.
“I saw Jerry,” he said. “I told him I had shot a nice buck. When we walked up on the buck, Jerry’s mouth just dropped. There’s obviously something special about the size of that rack. I had never seen a rack worthy of mounting. I have shot some ‘eights’ and even a ten pointer but nothing worthy of a spot on the wall.”
The immensity of the 15-point rack was obvious to anyone, but Gramoll was about to find out just how special the buck was by official score. He called his long-time best friends, hunting and fishing buddies, and Juneau County neighbors, Tim and Tiff Belle, and told them to come over and see a big buck. Tim Belle, Gramoll said, is a research enthusiast with significant knowledge regarding antler scoring.
“They were walking over when I lifted the buck’s head,” Gramoll said. “Their mouths dropped too and their eyes lit up. Tim said, ‘You don’t know what you’ve got here.’”
Official scorer John Ramsey, a friend of Tiff Belle’s parents, would begin to answer the question and verify that the buck was uniquely special. Ramsey agreed to meet Gramoll on the parents’ property to green score the buck.
 |
 |
“We drove into Lyndon Station and immediately a crowd gathered,” Gramoll said. “I felt like the town hero; everyone was shaking my hand. At Tiff’s parents’, we backed into the barn and Ramsey took the measurements. He knew it would break the Juneau County record by six inches for typical whitetailed deer and probably will be among the top 10 best bucks ever shot in Wisconsin. The 15-point buck gross scored 202-18 and carried a preliminary score of 184-5/8 after deductions.
“It’s been just overwhelming,” Gramoll said. “Who would have known? I would have never even believed I could have seen something like this in the field … let alone drop it.”