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BBB records digitized

steveOh

Junior Member
750
114
Dayton Area
Thanks guys. Luck was on my side that day.

Real nice buck! I'd love to hear the story on him!

The short story is that I jumped him out of his bed on a hillside in an overgrown strip mine. He stood up broadside at 15-20 yards and I put a neck shot on him. If you want to read the long story I'll dig up the article I wrote for NAW magazine and post it later.

Inside Spread...22 3/8
Abnormal Points...3 3/8

Main Beam...Right...27 4/8...Left...27 7/8

1st Point.................6 4/8............6 0/8
2nd........................12 4/8..........10 4/8
3rd.........................11 3/8..........11 5/8
4th...........................9 6/8...........9 7/8
5th...........................2 0/8...........3 6/8
1st Cir.......................4 5/8...........4 7/8
2nd...........................4 1/8...........4 3/8
3rd............................4 2/8...........4 2/8
4th............................4 6/8...........4 4/8
Total........................87 3/8..........87 5/8

Gross...........197 3/8
Deductions......9 1/8
Net..............188 2/8
 

Mushijobah

Junior Member
64
0
Interesting seeing discrepencies between where people told you they shot a deer and where they reported they shot the deer :D
 

Gern186

Dignitary Member
Supporting Member
10,171
201
NW Ohio Tundra
I saw some names listed twice as well. Same year, size inches on the deer, same county. I realize there will be bugs to work out of the online display. For now, it makes me glad I didn't have mine scored last year. I think he would have made it just fine. Just not sure it is worth dropping the coin to be in the book. I went through the first 20 pages online. Didn't see a single Allen, or Auglaize county deer on the list. We are up here in the "mecca of prime Ohio deer hunting land". :smiley_cry::smiley_blackeye:

Okay, so my area isn't a complete wasteland. There have been some good deer taken in these areas. I think this list simply goes to show: Not every deer is put in the books. Makes me wonder how much longer the list would be if everyone entered their deer? Hell, I didn't even see any of the Rex clan on the first 20 pages. I am sure they have some which would have made it. Maybe there is a rule against it since he is on the board or something? I dunno. Just would be interesting to know a little more about the local deer potential I guess, along with just how many the state has on record. Can't blame those who haven't listed theirs.


I have only listed 1 I think...i know I have 3 others that make it. Kind of mind boggling when you start going thru the list and see just how many bucks there are listed there....and also knowing there are tons more not accounted for.. Ohio is a great state evidently.
 
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steveOh

Junior Member
750
114
Dayton Area
Hell ya I want to read the long story!



Here is an edited version of the article that I wrote back in 1996 for North American Magazine.

During the 1995 gun season I hunted on about 250 acres of private land in Hocking County, half of which consisted of hardwoods and pines while the rest was a reclaimed strip mine. This old strip mine sits on top of a ridge and is grown over with tall weeds and small pines and is surrounded by timbered hills.

All morning, on Friday of the first week of the shotgun season, I was thinking back over the events of the past week. On the previous Monday I had taken a nice doe late in the afternoon while hunting from a tree stand. With my doe tag filled, and being my last day of the week-long hunting trip, I was about to face up to the fact that my chances of taking a good buck this week were becoming slim.

The doe that I shot on opening day was taken while hunting from a tree stand situated 30 to 40 yards inside the woods line below the strip mine. With my doe tag filled I had the rest of the week, or season for that matter, to hunt for a buck. My goal was to shoot one that would be bigger than last year’s young 8-pointer. I hunted from the same tree stand every day all day except for a couple hours in the afternoon. Each day I would see a few does and yearlings go by my stand all within range, but no bucks. They would usually pass just inside the edge of the woods.

Around eleven o’clock I decided to get out of my stand and get some exercise. I thought that I would go back to the area where we park our vehicles, eat lunch, and find out how everybody did that morning. When I climbed down I thought about the two deer that came by the stand the night before; instead of traveling inside the edge of the woods they disappeared through the trees and into the tall weeds on the hillside of the strip mine. I thought that before I would head back to join the boys that I would go look and see why the deer went in that direction and if there was a trail in the weeds.

When I walked up to the edge of the woods I could see where the weeds parted and that there was a slight trail along the hillside through the weeds. After walking into the weeds about 20 yards the briars and stickers became thick. I had to decide whether to keep going on through this head-high thick stuff or go back and have lunch. But I still wondered where this trail went, so I fought my way through the stickers a little bit further. I was about to give up when the weeds got easier to walk through so I continued on. I would slowly take a few steps and then stop for a few minutes at a time.

I soon realized that from all the articles that I had read in various hunting magazines that this hillside fit the conditions for a classic bedding area for bucks. The wind was blowing slightly from my left over the top of the strip mine and down the hill and into the woods. They could smell danger above them and see anything below them into the woods. I kept up the walk/stop approach figuring if I kicked any deer up they would most likely run down the hill into the woods possibly giving me a shot. The weeds are head-high and so thick that the deer would have to hop and jump over and through them in order to make their escape.

At about halfway across the hillside I looked to my right and through a clearing in the trees. I could see the boys lounging back at the trucks some 800 yards away. I waved my orange ball cap at them, and one of them waved back. He was watching me with his binoculars. After walking 30 to 40 more yards I could no longer see them.

At about three-quarters of the way across the hillside all of a sudden ahead of me and slightly downhill about 20 yards away, I saw antlers rising up above the weeds. The tall tines moved slowly left and then right, and were facing downhill towards the woods to my right. I quickly decided for a neck shot and aimed my Mossberg 500 pump behind the rack and low and fired. The antlers slowly dropped down, but only a few inches. I hurriedly pumped in another shell expecting the buck to run off, but the rack was still there! This time I aimed slightly lower and fired again. The rack vanished in the weeds.

I did not hear a thing. I did not know whether I hit it or whether it snuck away or what! I was expecting to hear him crashing through the woods below me, or if he was hit I would hear him thrashing around on the ground. I fumbled around trying to reload while listening and looking for the deer running off.

I thought to myself that I had just blown a chance of a lifetime and that the boys would not believe me when I told them about the size of the tines sticking up above the weeds. I could not believe that I had missed. Why didn’t he run off after the first shot? I didn’t know whether to stay still and wait or what!

After only a few minutes the anticipation killed me. I had to find out if I hit him or not. I took about three steps and fell flat on my face in a weed-covered ditch! I figured now I really did it. If he heard me, he probably took off; and I could not see him from down in this ditch. I got up and walked towards the area where he was when I shot and nearly stepped on him. He laid there at my feet with one shot in him through the neck. I could not believe it.

When I looked at the size of the rack I let out a big “war whoop,” my heart started pounding and I was shaking all over. I was gasping for air. I still could not believe what had just happened. As I bent over and started to count the points I could hear the quads coming across the top of the strip mine. They knew I was buck hunting and figured I would not shoot unless I saw a good one. I took off up the hill towards them; they were yelling at me to find out where I was.

They could not see me through the tall weeds so I put my orange cap on my gun barrel and raised it above the weeds until they spotted me. When they did they headed down my way. They were hollering at me wanting to know what I shot, all the while I was trying to stop them from driving down the hill for fear that they would drive head first into one of the ditches.

When I got to them I was still out of breath. I was trying to tell them how big the buck was but I could hardly talk. They got off the quads and walked down to take a look. When one of them finally found him he started counting the tines, “fifteen or sixteen counting all the stickers,” he said.

We proceeded to drag him through the ditch and then tied his rack to the awaiting Polaris and pulled him up the rest of the hill to the top of the strip mine. We mounted him atop the ATV and I drove him back to the trucks where some of the others were waiting. Some of the guys started to guess about how many Boone and Crockett points it would score but we didn’t know how to officially measure him. I had never really seen a mount that was measured by B & C to compare it with. I knew it was big, but not just HOW big?

After the picture taking, story telling, and high fives were over I went back to where I shot the buck to find out just where the buck had been bedding down. I found a matted-down area situated between several small pines that had been overgrown with weeds and stickers. Outside of the group of pines about ten yards away was a depression in the weeds where apparently he would lay depending upon how well he wanted to be concealed. He must have heard me and stood up to investigate when I saw his rack. His bed was less than 100 yards from one of our permanent tree stands that members of our party hunted from earlier in the week and not more than 150 yards downwind of a service road which some of us walked daily.

After the 60-day drying period I had the rack scored by Randy Clark, an official scorer for the Buckeye Big Buck Club; and he measured it at 197 3/8 gross typical points with a net typical score of 188 2/8 and with an inside spread of 22 3/8 inches.

Later in March I entered the rack into the Ohio Deer & Turkey Expo in Columbus where there were hundreds of Ohio bucks displayed. That was my first time there. I could not believe the amount of trophy-sized Ohio deer that were harvested in a single season that could be seen in one place. It was really an impressive sight.

My award-winning rack won “Best of Show” in the Shotgun typical division, and according to the Buckeye Big Buck Club’s vice president, Buzz Hall, my trophy winning typical buck was not only the biggest of the 95-‘96 season but the No. 3 all-time Ohio shotgun kill and the No. 5 all-time kill by any weapon in the state.
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