ohio monster deer

We know of five bucks that were taken this season out of my in-laws woods by immediately family members (they all got six pointers) and an additional two bucks were taken by neighbors that are on this same one square mile block.

I currently have an 8 pt, 9 pt, 10pt, 11 pt on the wall and now will have a 12 pt on the wall.  So we know what I will get next year !!  A 7 pointer!!!   Hopefully it will be a 7 point doe!!

Success was accomplished by putting up many tree stands (up to five), moving many tree stands, sitting in many tree stands at many different times of the day.  Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn every now and again!

I bought a new tree stand at our local Deer & Turkey Expo in Columbus, Ohio in 2004 and we put it in the back part of my in-laws farm about 300 feet into the woods.  A corn field was in the direction of the front of my stand and I could hear the farmer combining the corn all afternoon.  Earlier in the evening a small buck came through.  I anticipated when I set the stand that they would be coming from any particular direction - as whitetails will often do what you don't expect them to do.  This small buck winded me, snorted and walked off.  After he left, I turned and faced the direction he came from.  About 15 minutes after the farmer finished combining the far side of the field, and just about dusk, out comes another buck.  I knew he was a fully mature deer by the way he walked stiff legged.  Once I saw the size and mass, I tried to focus of a vital point.  I aimed my new crossbow that I just bought the same year and he dropped on the snap of the bow.  Instead of hitting in the lower chest area, it hit his spine.  He had survived so far by staying in the cornfield instead of traveling in the woods. 

It took all my and my wife’s strength to pull him up on a pulley rope so we could slide him into my truck to take him to the local check in station.   I may have a short five foot bed on my truck, but I had to put him corner to corner and then we still had to angle his head up so we could close the tail gate !!  I have never gotten a deer with this huge of a body and as you can see in the picture he is barely off the ground and he is as tall as I am and I am 5'7".

 My wife also shot a very nice buck this year too.  She got hers about two weeks after I shot my buck and about 100 yards away from where I shot mine.  She had to use a crossbow this year because she broke her elbow in May when we were going turkey hunting and she has been unable to pull her compound bow very well since then. 

She got off work early on Election Day and took her ATV back to her stand area and was in the stand at 5:10 p.m.  About 5:20 here comes this very nice buck.  She didn’t know how good he was, just that he was nice enough that if she got a shot, she wanted him on our wall.  He stopped in a clearing and stared right up at her.  She says she got “buck fever” and shot a higher then she wanted to.  Instead of waiting in the stand before searching for the deer, she decided to go cast her vote and then come back to look for him.  We came back to look but it was raining very hard by the time we decided to go in for the night.  I found him later in the neighbors’ pasture about 75 yards from where he was shot.  He was a very nice 9-point and the largest she has gotten to date.