Mike Handley posted on August 20, 2012 06:53
By Mike Handley
Thirty years ago, a private club leased the portion of an Ohio coal company’s land that Todd Lowe used to hunt.
“They tore down my stand and placed a ‘no hunting’ sign on the same tree,” he said.
That turn of events forced Todd to explore new nooks and crannies on public (permit) land. One of the most promising was across the road, where deer sign ringed some beaver ponds. He even jumped a huge buck there that he estimated was at least a 170-incher.
Although he moved to West Virginia in 1989 and to North Carolina in 2005, he still returned to Ohio to hunt deer.
In 2011, Todd had planned to return to Ohio the first week of November, but his aunt fell ill in mid-September. He wound up going much earlier.
“We left North Carolina after church on opening weekend of Ohio’s archery season so I could hang a stand before nightfall and be in the woods on Monday morning,” he said. “That beaver pond was calling my name!”
The first morning in the woods, he saw a buck right before daylight that had to be a 200-incher. It came to within 18 yards, but Todd couldn’t see his bow sight’s pins.
He saw the same buck twice more at dusk.
Despite a drizzling rain, Todd was back in his stand the next morning. When the buck of his dreams appeared on the same trail, this time with plenty of daylight to illuminate sight pins, Todd drilled it at 18 yards.
“It took me four hours to drag the deer two miles to the road,” he said. “I thought I was going to have a heart attack and die.”
At 215 2/8 inches (without the inside spread), Todd’s turdy-pointer is the sixth largest Irregular ever felled in Ohio by compound bow. The story, in his own words, will appear in Rack magazine this fall.