Bowhunter Chances Bad Wind, Arrows Monster Buck on 90-Degree Day

Kristin Levin made an excellent hit on this buck, her target deer for the 2025 season, on just the second afternoon on stand. Image courtesy of Kristin Levin

Managing a family with young kids can be a handful, especially when both parents are diehard deer hunters. That’s Brad and Kristin Levin of Ohio in a nutshell. Finding time to go deer hunting requires careful planning, and there’s no room for self-centeredness.

“We decide who hunts based on who has a target buck to go after,” Kristin explained. “If we both have a target deer, we rotate based on which buck is moving more consistently in the daylight. Brad stays home with the kids when I hunt, and I watch them when he hunts. When we hunt an hour away from home near my family, sometimes they babysit our kids so that Brad and I can hunt together.”

The Levins run cell cameras virtually all year round and know which bucks are frequenting the properties they hunt. For the past few seasons, a particular buck tended to show up on the trail cameras about a month before the archery opener.

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“We’ve been watching him since 2023 when he was 3 1/2 years old,” Kristin said. “We’re big on shooting mature bucks. We hold off until they are 5 1/2 years old. Anyway, the last two seasons, we got pictures of him in the early season, and then he just vanished until there was snow on the ground.”

This year, the buck appeared on schedule. He was hanging out in a 1-acre woodlot that has a creek and a thicket behind Kristin’s stand. The woodlot borders 200 acres of crop fields, and the Levins have a mineral site along the field edge. The buck was consistently walking the edge and hitting the mineral site.

The monster showed up in velvet before the opener. Image courtesy of Kristin Levin

Kristin hunted the buck on opening day. It was hot, but she saw a handful of does and fawns along with two young bucks. There was plenty of action, but her target buck didn’t show up. And he wasn’t on the trail camera after dark, either. The second afternoon, daytime temperatures reached 90 degrees, and the wind direction was poor for the stand location.

“All day, Brad and I were discussing whether or not I should hunt that evening,” she said. “Something in my gut said to hunt. Brad said that if I was feeling that way, I should go. I took the longest scent-free shower I could and went for it.”

The evening prior, Kristin had identified a vine that was partially obstructing her shooting coverage, so she had Brad cut it out of the way. The first deer on the scene was a doe fawn, which Kristin noted was acting strangely. She heard leaves crunching, and looking behind the stand, she noticed a 4-point buck. She soon lost sight of the buck and continued watching the doe fawn. Expecting the 4-pointer to reappear, Kristin suddenly noticed a different deer entering the field.

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“Based on the body size, I immediately knew that it wasn’t the 4-pointer,” she recalled. “When the deer faced toward me and gave me a better view, I realized it was the buck I was after. I don’t know how he got there or where he came from. He was directly downwind from me. He walked about five yards closer and stopped by a little tree with a scrape beneath it. He turned mostly broadside, and I took my shot. Good thing Brad had cut down the vine, because it would have been in the way.”

Kristin’s arrow, propelled by her 50-pound Mathews bow, passed through the buck. As she inspected the arrow and blood trail, she saw lung blood with bubbles on one side of the buck’s departure path and darker blood with no bubbles on the other side. She realized that the animal likely hadn’t been quite as broadside as she had initially thought. Soon after, Brad reached her location on their side-by-side.

“My buck ran through the field for about 45 yards before cutting into the woods,” she explained. “We found a lot of blood in the field. We weren’t comfortable with proceeding into the woods, so we backed out. We didn’t want to risk it. Back at home, we put the kids to bed and were contemplating what to do next because we didn’t have a babysitter. Meanwhile, Brad’s friend showed up, and I told the two of them to go back out and shine a flashlight into the woods to see if they could see anything. The main thing is that I didn’t want to risk losing the meat by waiting until the morning, given the heat.”

The two men followed the blood trail about 10 yards into the woods, where they lost it. There, Brad lifted his spotlight and saw what he described as looking like a branch or antler tines. He tiptoed forward and found Kristin’s buck, expired. The shot had been better than Kristin thought, and the deer had run a total of 70 yards, expiring within seconds of being hit. She was relieved to know that the meat would be fine.

The giant buck was recovered after a short, 70-yard blood trail. Image courtesy of Kristin Levin

Last year, Kristin killed her biggest buck, which scored 155 inches. This year’s buck bested that one by nearly 20 inches, grossing 174 inches. The monarch has eight points on its right antler and six on its left. With mass carrying up the main beams and a bull body, it’s a tremendous deer.

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“Our kids are all about hunting, too, which is nice because they get to experience it nice and young,” she said. “They go shed hunting with us every year. Last year, I shot a buck right on our home property, and our then-4-year-old daughter came along with us to track it. Many times, when Brad or I come home from hunting, the kids enthusiastically ask, ‘Did you get a deer?’ It’s awesome that they’re so interested in the lifestyle that my husband and I love so much.”