In late October 2012, my brother Mark and I headed out for a week of bowhunting in Ohio. We left Rockingham, N.C., for the Tar Hollow State Forest in Hocking, Ross and Vinton Counties, east of Chillicothe. It was our eighth trip to Ohio’s second largest state forest.
We attended a Christian Bowhunters Association hunt with the Lord of the Harvest Archery Club from Dayton. In the seven years I’d hunted there, I’d never taken a deer, but my brother had taken a doe, a 4-pointer, an 8-pointer, an 11-pointer and a spike. Mark says he’d love to take a 10- or 12-pointer with great mass, but he takes what he can because he doesn’t like to eat tags.
Since you can only take one buck in Ohio, I’d been aiming for a mature wallhanger, which is why I let seven years pass without using a tag.
I decided this year would be different. I would trophy hunt the first three days, and then take what the Lord sent my way. I didn’t want to go home empty handed again.
Arriving at camp, we had just enough time to do some quick scouting before dark. When we returned, we met Mark’s son Jason and his best friend James, also known as Biggie, and shared scouting information. We discussed where to go the next day.
Then it started to rain.
It rained that first night, all night, and then it rained for the next five days straight. Every day, we got up hoping it would stop. The problem just wasn’t rain; it was also cold, with temperatures in the lower 40s and upper 30s with wind gusting at 20 to 30 mph. Deer were not moving, and that made hunting much harder.
For the next three days, no one in the entire camp of roughly 80 hunters took a single deer. It was the worst weather we had ever had in Ohio. In fact, the local club reported it was the worst weather since the hunts started 20 years ago.
Mark and I spent two days scouting, looking for trails, rubs and scrapes. The rain wasn’t as bad as we thought; it washed our scent and helped us stay quiet while getting to our setup. On the third day, we awoke to snow — 3 inches of it.
We got dressed and took off on a trail through a grove of pines where we had seen turkeys, a sure sign of deer, Mark said. Road conditions were a problem, however.
I put my truck in 4-wheel drive, but we slid back and forth at 3 mph all the way down the mountain before making it to our hunting spot. Mark went up a trail while I walked farther on an old logging road.
Just as I got settled in my stand, I heard an owl hoot — Mark’s signal. I couldn’t believe he was done hunting.
He was gone, but his climbing stand was in the back of the truck, his bow was in the cab, and two arrows were missing from his quiver.
Tracking him in the snow, I made it over the first hill when he yelled for me to help drag out a spike he’d already field dressed. It had been under his treestand, and he’d taken it with his bow at 18 yards as it was quartering away.
Mark wondered if the spike was over 3 inches; it looked more like 4 to me, so he put his antler tag on it and called it his unicorn buck since the other spike was broken off. Back at camp, Mark told everyone he’d broken the ice, and now it was time for others to take their deer.
During lunch, we discussed our next moves. Mark wanted to drive into town and get an antlerless deer tag, so he’d dropped me off for the evening hunt and said he’d return when it was dark.
I was on my own in the rain and snow in the middle of a forest, and about 20 feet up the tree I’d climbed when it swayed. That’s when I realized it was a dead tree. I got down quickly and found a better tree and a better view. I could look up the side of a mountain and see a ravine that went almost to the top, and see both sides of the ravine. With the snow cover, the white background was a perfect way to pick out anything moving.
An hour before dark, I saw a large, dark-bodied deer 300 yards away traveling up the incline. I figured it was a buck, and made a snort-wheeze. The buck stopped briefly, but continued on. I tried the snort-wheeze again, and 15 minutes later, I noticed four smaller, lighter colored deer moving below where I spotted the buck.
These deer were playing and chasing one another down the mountain, probably close to their bedding area out of the wind. Watching them kept me pumped despite cold rain freezing my hands. The smallest doe gracefully leaped over a log in front of me, an image I will never forget. Just then I saw a larger deer moving toward the does.
I thought it must be the buck I saw earlier, but then I saw another deer of the same size and color move. I watched them through trees, with no open space to see clearly. It was also raining, and near the end of legal shooting light, so my visibility was limited.
Without the background the snow provided, I wouldn’t have been able to see as much or watch as the two deer moved down the ravine then back up. I began to think my hunt was over. A few minutes later the larger, darker deer came down the ravine toward me.
They were bucks. Keep coming, boys, I thought. Maybe I’ll get a shot.
They got closer and closer; the buck with a long main beam that stretched toward his nose moved to the left under the hill, a distance too far to shoot. He appeared to have three tines missing off his main beam, but the second buck had multiple points and was now standing broadside about 40 yards away.
Briefly, I wondered what I was waiting for. I could make that shot. So I raised my bow and zeroed in on his chest and sent my arrow flying. I missed.
I had a moment of buck fever. Fortunately, that big buck didn’t know what had happened. He jumped three times and stopped right behind two trees.
If I couldn’t see him, he couldn’t see me. Hurriedly, I nocked another arrow. The buck started moving toward the creek, closer to me. He had no idea where I was.
I was at full draw, 26 yards away, and sounded a doe bleat. When he stopped broadside in front of me, I released my Muzzy broadhead right into his chest — a complete pass-though shot. The bruiser flew down the hill, running down to the creek. He made three leaps in the water and crashed with a loud splash.
My hunt was over. Finally, I had taken a big-bodied, multi-tined buck in the last minutes of legal shooting light. I couldn’t have been happier. When I got the second shot opportunity, I was determined to make it count.
Climbing down, I saw both my arrows with the lighted nocks attached. I collected them and my stand off the tree, then headed for the road and met Mark, who had just pulled up. Perfect timing!
Mark was expecting to hear me to tell him I hadn’t seen anything, but I surprised him when I told him he couldn’t stay in the truck out of the rain. He needed to help me drag my buck out.
I had to convince him I wasn’t kidding.
We made our way to the creek, walking downstream when he spotted one side of the rack above the water.
“That’s what you want to see!” he said.
It was a beautiful, wide-racked 8-pointer with a 17-inch inside spread. After field dressing, he weighed roughly 215 pounds, and we barely got him raised enough to get on the tailgate.
My buck was the third taken at camp that week, so Mark and I were guides for Jason and Biggie, who hadn’t yet taken a deer. We put them in one of our best spots, where Jason took a button buck. After six days, only four deer had been taken, and three of them were from our group.
It never stopped raining until we packed the truck to leave. All that bad weather made it possible to take my best buck ever with a bow. God is so good.