For the Bone Collector, Michael Waddell, the weeks before archery season have a way of stirring up old memories. Get him and the crew together, especially with the chores done and the grass freshly cut, and it isn’t long before the stories start coming out. In this Backyard Life video, Waddell settles in and walks through a handful of his most memorable whitetail hunts, from a giant Kansas buck to a doe he’ll never forget. And as he tells them, one theme keeps rising to the top: every hunter evolves, and the things that make a hunt special change right along with you.
The Evolution of a Hunter
Ask most hunters what they want and they’ll tell you they’re chasing their next big buck. Waddell was at that point too. But nearly 20 years into Bone Collector, he sees his own path a little differently now. As he puts it, we all evolve. You can be a die-hard who swears a deer has to hit a certain score to matter, and then one day you have kids, or grandkids, or you take a young son or daughter into the woods, and suddenly the whole idea of a trophy changes shape.
He is quick to point out that the fun of it never really goes away. Some of his favorite memories aren’t kills. He still laughs about a wild setup, where one morning he could have shot a beautiful ten-pointer in Pennsylvania, then another giant in New Jersey that same evening just after buying a license. He couldn’t fire a shot on either one because of the rules he was hunting under, but the memory stuck. That’s the thing about hunting. The story doesn’t always need a tag to be worth telling.
The Kansas Giant
Waddell rewinds back to the early years of Bone Collector, when he had just bought a Kansas farm and money was about as tight as it gets. Nearly every dollar he had was going right back into the brand, chasing airtime on the Outdoor Channel and betting the whole operation would take off. Buying land in the middle of all that pressure was enough to keep a man up at night.
But a true giant was living on that farm. And up to that point, Waddell had tagged plenty of good bucks without ever putting his hands on one over 190 inches. So, when the deer finally gave him a chance on his own ground, the moment carried a weight that went well beyond the score.
The shot dropped the biggest deer of his life. What the camera caught was a grown man completely undone, searching for words that wouldn’t come. A buck like that is the kind you dream about for a lifetime and rarely lay eyes on, let alone draw back on inside bow range. And he was standing on ground he finally owned himself. Two lifelong dreams were answered on the same afternoon.
That hunt did something interesting. Most hunters would set a new goal to shoot three or four more like it. Waddell went the other way. He had checked the box on a genuine giant, and from there he decided he was perfectly happy going backward, as long as the bucks were mature. It was then he started enjoying the hunt itself more than the number.
The Michelin Man
Fast forward past the sale of the Kansas farm and a move to Georgia, add a house full of kids, and Waddell’s idea of a trophy had shifted again. That brings us to a buck he called Michelin Man.
This deer was the complete opposite of the Kansas giant. Michelin Man was never going to score much of anything. What he did have, however, was age and history. Waddell figured the buck was already mature when he bought the Georgia place five years earlier, which put him at somewhere around 9 or 10 years old, maybe more. That old bruiser had been around long enough to plug up Waddell’s tractor tires and, by the sound of it, breed about every doe on the property.
When Waddell finally connected, right before a trip to Iowa, he was every bit as fired up as he had been over the 190. The buck was just a cull buck, and he carried six points on one side, which made him legal by Georgia standards. Waddell calls that “old management 101.” But to him, this deer was a trophy in every way that counted. A big-bodied, dominant, ten-year-old buck he had watched and hunted for years. Score had nothing to do with it.
Passing the Torch
The hunt that might top them all doesn’t have an inch of antler to its name.
Waddell’s youngest son, Waylon, had his heart set on bow hunting. The challenge with a young hunter is always the equipment, getting enough draw weight and the right draw length behind the arrow to make a clean shot. Waddell put a bow in his hands around age seven or eight, kept him shooting through the year, and by nine he’d earned his shot.
Waddell got to run the camera while his boy settled in, waited for the deer to turn broadside, and made a perfect shot at about 18 steps. They watched her drop right there in the food plot, in sight of the family’s blind tucked in the bushes. It was, as Waddell says, just a doe for the table. It also happens to be one of his favorite hunts of all time, and it made Waylon the youngest Waddell ever to kill a deer with a bow.
When the Goals Started to Shift
Looking back over nearly two decades of hunting on camera, Waddell says the crew has been responsible for a lot of gut piles and a lot of happy times. What has changed is the appreciation. As everyone got a little older, they stopped skipping over the small stuff and stopped taking any of it for granted.
That’s the evolution of a hunter in a nutshell. What starts as a chase for inches can turn into a morning spent filming your kid, and both feel like the best hunt of your life. There is no wrong version of it, and there is a lot of freedom in that. Set your goals, work hard, and let them change when life changes.
Where Exmark Fits In
So what does a lawnmower have to do with any of this? More than you would think.
Every property Waddell has owned, from Kansas to Georgia, has come with a certain pride and respect. When you care about a piece of ground, you want the right tools to take care of it. That morning, he was cutting grass on his new Exmark, and taking real satisfaction in the machine and the finished job. He’s partnered with Exmark for years now, and the way he tells it, the people behind the product are every bit as good as the equipment.
Frequently Asked Questions
Waddell’s biggest whitetail is the roughly 190-inch buck he arrowed in Kansas on a farm he had just purchased during the early days of Bone Collector. He calls it the buck of a lifetime and the biggest deer he has ever taken.
Absolutely. Does provide meat for the table and are an important part of managing a healthy deer population. For Waddell, filming his son’s first bow kill on a doe became one of his all-time favorite hunts, which shows the value of a hunt is not measured in inches.
Waddell runs an Exmark Lazer Z to keep his Georgia property looking sharp, from the pecan orchard to the yard, and has partnered with the brand for years. You can see the full lineup of zero-turn mowers on the Exmark site.
