So with the good-natured ribbing of close siblings, she entered “180” on her cell phone screen and would show it to her brother almost any time. “I put it on there to harass him,” she said. “And it was all in good fun.”

Paula’s new bowhunting interest gives her plenty of time in the woods. “It’s a good hobby because, being Mennonite, I don’t do television or movies, so after school I could go get in my stand for a couple of hours. I just wanted to shoot something nice. And because of my not finding my buck the year before, what I wanted more than anything was a clean kill, so I was going to wait for the perfect shot and wouldn’t shoot unless it was under 20 yards.”

Both Paula and Matt had their minds set on an absolutely huge 8-pointer they had on a trail camera. “That was an incentive to sit back, relax and wait for something nice to walk by,” she said. “I saw the 8-pointer about a week before I took mine from the same stand, but he was about 60 yards away, bedded in the grass, and I didn’t figure I could get close to him. So I just let him walk.”

After spending more than 50 hours on stand in the 2005 season, Paula’s patience and persistence were about to be rewarded. On Nov. 23, she finished with school and -- being a stickler for eliminating anything that a deer’s nose can detect -- rushed home to shower with scent-free soap and don her Scent-Lok suit. She arrived at her stand at about 3:15 p.m.

“I was sitting in a shelterbelt by a food plot where we left standing corn,” she said. “It wasn’t really a good move to hunt that stand, as the wind was blowing from me to the cornfield.”

Paula experimented with some doe bleats, and it wasn’t long before she caught movement over her shoulder as a mature doe walked the edge of the field.

“I got my bow off the bow hook and hoped there would be a buck with her,” said the lady bowhunter. “But after 52 hours in a stand, my confidence was just a little bit low.”

The doe walked past, downwind of the hunter, but never noticed any human scent. “She was just so relaxed I just knew there wasn’t a buck with her,” Paula remembered. “And then, all of a sudden I saw antlers coming over my shoulder and that’s when I clipped my release on my string loop. I knew right away I wanted to shoot as it was a very nice deer.”

The buck stopped and looked into the shelterbelt where Paula was perched. He took a few steps toward her and worked a small scrape.

“He sniffed the scrape and stuck his head back and did the lick-branch thing and his old antlers just went way back on his back,” she recalled. “And then he turned to follow the doe and I drew, but all I could see in my sights were just a few tiny twigs.”

Paula was worried he would hurry to follow the doe but waited as she followed the buck with her sight pins, hoping for a clear shot.

“He was almost broadside at 10 to 12 yards and I shot,” she said. “I thought I hit a shoulder, as I knew I didn’t get a total pass-through as he went into a dead run I could see my fletching.”

The buck never slowed as he left, and she quickly lost track of him as he ran down the shelterbelt. She thought she may have heard him crash but convinced herself otherwise. She waited a few minutes and called Matt on the cell phone.