Ryan Slopko almost missed out on his 15 minutes of fame in 2014.
If he hadn't passed up an 8-pointer on Oct. 22 that year, the Ohio teenager would never have seen the much larger whitetail in its wake.
Ryan and his stepbrother, Danny, were bowhunting about 200 yards apart on their grandmother's Ross County farm that afternoon. Both were hoping for a crack at a jaw-dropping buck photographed by Danny's trail camera.
When Ryan first saw the 4x4, he wanted it. He even drew his bow.
Had the deer not stopped behind some brush when Ryan grunted at it, someone else's whitetail would be featured here.
"I had no shot," he told Ed Waite, who wrote the story for Rack magazine. "But I did get a good look at its antlers and decided it wasn't as big as I thought it was."
Ryan was about 20 feet up a tree beside a dense thicket within the woods. Nearby were two cornfields, the nearest across a steep ravine.
"About an hour before dark, I heard noise inside the thicket. Soon, I spotted two does headed for the corn," he said. "They passed behind me without detecting my presence.
"As they were approaching the ravine, something else back in the thicket drew their attention, and they darted toward me and stopped."
The noisemaker turned out to be a forkhorn, which joined them in crossing the ravine and heading to the corn. The 4x4 - the one Ryan opted not to shoot - arrived soon afterward.
"After he left, I placed my bow on the climber right in front of me so it would be easier to grab," he said.
The next deer to exit the thicket was the big one from Danny's trail cam.
"The buck was following the exact same path as the 8-pointer," Ryan said. "I mouth-grunted when it got close to my opening. When it came to an abrupt halt, my arrow was on its way."
The 14-pointer's BTR composite score is 191 2/8 inches.