A Mt. Gilead, Ohio, man might've set out on Dec. 6, 2015, to help his 9-year-old son shoot his first deer, but he wound up burning the tag when the boy found the distance daunting.
Brody Young started retrieving trail camera photographs of a Morrow County buck in 2013 that held a lot of potential. The buck just needed a few more years to reach it.
The distinctive animal loved to step in front of cameras, regardless of time of day. It remained on the 300-plus-acre farm for two more years, growing each season.
When photos resumed in the summer in 2015, the deer clearly had reached the potential Brody saw a couple of years earlier. The buck sat alone at the top of his wish list.
"All through the early months of bow season, I hunted hard - mornings when I could, evenings for sure. I changed stands with the changing weather and wind," he told Ed Waite, who's writing his story for Rack magazine.
In early November, Brody heard rumors that a neighbor had taken a really great buck in the area. He never heard a name or saw photographs, but he was really bummed because the trail cam photos had ceased.
When Ohio's firearms season opened, Brody concentrated on making little Cooper's dream come true.
"On the last Sunday, we went to our blind in the morning and sat until we had to leave for Cooper to play in a basketball game," he added.
When the game ended at 4:00, Cooper wanted to go home and relax, but his dad played on his desire to tag a buck, explaining there was very little season left and daylight was waning. Thus, they returned to the blind tucked in the corner of a woodlot next to a large cut cornfield.
A half-hour or so later, after the boy had reluctantly set down his gun because a doe he wanted to shoot was out of range, his father spotted another deer and grabbed the binoculars.
"When I zeroed in, I realized it was a buck. I wasn't sure how nice, but it was a buck nevertheless," he said. "So Cooper raised his gun once more and, after what seemed like forever, said it was just too far away for him to shoot."
Brody then shouldered his own smokepole. He estimated the quartering-away buck to be between 125 and 130 yards.
It was indeed.
Brody's 21-pointer has a BTR composite score of 208 7/8. Four of the mainframe 10-pointer's uprights are between 10 and 14 inches long.
— Read Recent Blog! Same Deer, Different Day: Tommy Sears / BTR Composite Score: 206 6/8