Big Buck 411 Blog

If Not This Year …

If Not This Year …

By Mike Handley

Davey Stuckey waited a long time for a chance at his newest piece of wall art.

He first became acquainted with the distinctive whitetail when his trail camera yielded photographs of it in June 2017. In velvet and with a long time yet to grow, the Ross County, Ohio, specimen was already a head-turner.

Not for a lack of trying, Davey didn’t see the animal again for almost a year. The summer day after he and a friend spotted the buck in a soybean field, he set up a camera on the deer’s exit trail.

When the camera confirmed the animal was using the path regularly, Davey brushed-in a blind 40 yards off the well-worn trail. He named the deer Megaladon.

“The 2018 season opened Sept. 29, and I hunted 22 of the first 24 days. I saw Megaladon four times on another trail, but too far for me to even consider a shot. What I did consider was moving,” he told Ed Waite, who’s writing the story for Rack magazine.

Seven days after choosing an alternate bottomland site, Davey’s diligence was rewarded with a 13-yard shot at the 24-pointer.

He found the deer, which had died in a creek and become entangled in a logjam, three days later, long after many hunters would’ve thrown in the towel.

Its BTR score is 202 2/8 inches.

— Read Recent Blog! Multiple Beams in Oklahoma: The day someone makes an affordable trail camera capable of operating underwater, Travis Piepenbrok might buy it. Or he might not.

Copyright 2024 by Buckmasters, Ltd.

Copyright 2020 by Buckmasters, Ltd