During harvest time, Aaron Harvey has to wait for bad weather before he can spare the time to sit in a deer stand.
When Mother Nature obliged last October, Aaron went hunting for the third time since Ohio’s bow season had opened. He was dying to get a shot at either the 15-pointer or a large 9-pointer his trail cameras had photographed on the leased land.
His destination was a 15-foot-high, lock-on stand overlooking the edge of a large picked soybean field.
“I climbed into it about 3:30. Not long afterward, I saw eight or nine does entering the bean field from all directions,” he told Ed Waite, who’s writing his story for Rack magazine. “Later in the evening, an 8-point buck came out grunting and began chasing does.”
The sun was almost gone when Aaron’s 9-pointer appeared at 70 yards. The lovesick 4x4 was still in the field as well. An even bigger whitetail, one he’d never seen, appeared next.
“The big one also started checking the does, none of which were ready to breed,” Aaron said. “Then it spotted the 8-pointer and became very aggressive. It started for the young buck, which was maybe 20 yards from me.
“I saw the size of the rack and immediately began to shake,” he continued. “I reached for my Mathews and quickly drew as the buck came nearer. I knew if it reached the edge of the field, it would be at 22 yards.”
He didn’t get a pass-through.
Aaron and his buddies jumped the buck while trailing it that night, so they abandoned the search until morning.
The buck had gone to ground in a tangle of honeysuckle.
“I was a little torn up because coyotes had found it,” Aaron said. “A quarter of the meat was essentially destroyed. Maybe it was only one coyote that ate his fill and moved on when we arrived.”
The antlers tally 202 3/8 inches on the BTR scale.
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