Jon Dodridge's 2014 season did not begin as well as it ended.
Right out of the chute, the hunter from Minford, Ohio, failed to recover a handsome 10-pointer. He arrowed the 5x5 during his first evening in a stand, but there was no sign whatsoever.
When Jon returned a week later to check his trail camera, the number of fresh scrapes in the vicinity lifted his spirits considerably. His camera also yielded images of a giant whose long beams almost touched in the front.
The time-stamp showed the big deer passed in front of the lens on two consecutive days, just before dark. Jon was in that stand the next evening, and his wait was short.
The big whitetail came in on the heels of another buck that had been photographed. It stopped to make a scrape just 25 yards from Jon, and then it came to within 7 yards.
As soon as the crossbow bolt struck, the deer changed zip codes.
Jon picked up the trail a half-hour later and followed it for nearly 80 or 90 yards until the blood stopped. He then enlisted his Uncle Randy's help, but they couldn't find another trace. At midnight, Jon and a friend, Scott Sperry, continued looking for two hours in the rain, to no avail.
The next morning, Jon returned with his cousin Matthew Robbins, who stumbled across the deer with the cleaved liver. The animal had traveled in a 300-plus-yard semicircle, never leaving the 40 acres Jon was hunting in Scioto County.
The 19-pointer's BTR composite score is 183 4/8 inches. Ed Waite is writing the story for Buckmasters magazine.