If you ask Ryan Piper, the best remedy for a hangover is Oreo cookies, a selfie and a gagger of a whitetail.
Those three things, along with a buddy who wouldn’t take no for an answer, did the trick for this Ohio hunter on Nov. 5, 2016.
Noel Underwood, Ryan’s friend and neighbor, was buried on Nov. 4. Afterward, the man’s friends gathered at the local Elks Club to toast the departed.
The Friday of the funeral was the first in 37 days Ryan didn’t bowhunt his 400 acres, where he’d seen and retrieved trail camera photographs of an enormous whitetail. And he admits he was in no shape to go out on Saturday.
“I was too tired to get out of bed that morning, but a friend was coming up from down state to hunt with me,” Ryan told Ed Waite, who’s writing the story for Rack magazine. “He showed up about 4:45 a.m.”
The man tried repeatedly to roust Ryan, even threatening to come in and drag him out of the bed. Ryan ultimately relented, but only because walking required the mere putting of one foot in front of the other.
“Between 7:00 and 7:15, I sent my buddy a text, telling him to just shoot a doe so we could go back to the house,” Ryan said. “I then sent him a picture of me in my stand, eating Oreos. I thought it was funny, but he didn’t see the humor.”
Twenty minutes later, Ryan heard something and turned to see a gigantic buck – the one he’d been hunting all year – heading for a shooting lane at 55 yards.
He managed to put two arrows in the deer, the second one practically deflating it.
“I didn’t realize how nervous I was until a friend called a few moments later. I was shaking so badly that when I grabbed my phone to answer, it slipped from my grip and fell to the ground,” Ryan said.
“I tried getting down. Even went so far as to loosen the straps and lower my gear. But I realized I was in no shape to do it. I reattached my straps and sat back down,” he continued. “I ended up sitting there another half-hour.”
The Union County 33-pointer has a BTR composite score of 245 2/8 inches.
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