Both good and bad news came out of Logan Glassburn’s Oct. 18, 2020, deer hunt.
After sharing the good news with his wife, Morgan, which took considerably longer because he could barely speak, Logan called the landowner’s daughter to tell her he’d shot the giant buck she’d been hunting. “Please don’t be mad at me,” he began, as soon as she answered.
He was walking back to his truck at that point, and her reaction took the spring out of his step. He’d done absolutely nothing wrong, but he could imagine the pain.
“She said, ‘Oh, my God. I feel like somebody just punched me in the stomach,’” he said. “In the end, though, she was ok with it. She was glad a poacher hadn’t shot it.”
Logan gained permission to hunt the Union County, Ohio, farm two seasons earlier. The nearly 65-acre tract’s only hardwoods flank a shallow, property-line creek. The rest is planted pines and CRP.
He took only a doe from the place during those first two seasons.
Home alone on Sunday, Oct. 18 (his wife and kids were away), he decided to go on a date with his recurve bow.
Because the wind was right for his creek bottom deer stand, he texted the landowner’s daughter to ask if she would be hunting the farm. When he got no immediate response, he decided to hunt elsewhere. He was halfway there when she finally answered: All yours.
Since the farm was closer to his home, he did a u-turn in a church parking lot.
Once aloft, his first order of business was to pull out his grunt call.
“I grunted loudly four or five times, throwing it in different directions. One minute later, I saw a button buck feeding across the creek,” he said.
While the young deer ate, Logan tried a doe bleat. Eventually, the little deer lifted its head and stared down the creek before remembering it was still hungry.
Soon, Logan heard water splashing. He then saw ripples, followed by deer legs, and the legs were attached to a buck with a gorgeous set of antlers festooned with kickers and drop tines.
Forty. Yards. Away.
Oh, my God. It’s a MONSTER, he thought.
“I’m thinking, Please don’t screw this up. You’ve done it before; made the shot. You can do it again,” he said. “My heart was pounding.
“It was upwind, so it started half-mooning me,” Logan said. “I knew then I was going to get a shot. I drew when the buck was two steps short of an opening, and I mouth-grunted to get its attention.”
When Logan released his arrow, he saw a pinpoint of chartreuse heading toward the deer. It struck well forward of where he’d aimed, hitting the base of the neck, but the animal dropped.
Rather than risk the deer’s getting away, he launched three more arrows before he put his hands on it.
A BTR score of 201 4/8 inches makes it the largest ever felled in Ohio by an archer shooting a recurve bow.