Hunter’s First Antlered Buck Is a 241-Inch Ohio Giant

Ohio’s Jared Wurth is 19 years old. He took his first deer — a button buck — at age 8. After that, he didn’t deer hunt for quite a few seasons. But in 2024, he got back into it. His goal? Take a racked buck. He passed up several young bucks while waiting on “the right one” to come by. It didn’t happen.

Jared Wurth got back into hunting last season after a long hiatus with the goal of taking a nice buck. Images courtesy of Jared Wurth

This season, Jared was even more determined. When one of his dad’s friends shared pictures of a massive buck a few miles south of his house, his fire was stoked. A buck like this was way beyond his wildest dreams.

When a friend of the Wurth family showed up with trail cam photos of giant buck a few miles south of their farm, Jared never dreamed he might get a shot at it.

“We live in a heavily hunted area,” Jared’s dad, Edward, said. “Bucks around here don’t usually get the chance to reach maturity. Even a 140-inch buck is rare.”

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With that in mind, Edward has been working to make their farm attractive to deer. “This area is almost all row crops with minimal cover,” Edward explained. “We planted CRP and several trees 25 years ago. The result is some of the best cover in the area, and it attracts and holds deer.”

The Wurths managed their property to make it attract and hold deer.

That thick cover is where Jared was hunting. He normally hunts from a blind, but on Oct. 25, the wind was wrong for his usual blind. He wanted to hunt anyway, so his dad suggested he hunt from a particular treestand.

He took his son to the stand and made sure he was settled and secure before returning home. The stand was in a spruce that Edward had planted years ago. It overlooked a small opening in the heavy cover.

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Around 6:30 p.m., Jared spotted a buck poking its head out of a nearby thicket. Heavy cover prevented him from getting a full view of the animal, but his quick glimpse of one side of the rack made him think it was a nice buck that they’d had on their trail camera in 2024.

The buck stayed in the thicket about 30 yards away, and spruce limbs prevented Jared from getting a better view. After what seemed like forever, the buck finally emerged from the cover and entered the clearing in front of Jared’s stand. “He walked straight to a little tree and started rubbing on it,” Jared detailed.

The buck was broadside. Jared was hunting with a new crossbow and had practiced mostly out to 25 yards. He did take a few 30-yard shots, but hoped to keep his shots closer than that. His father had instructed him to keep his shots within 25 yards.

Earlier that evening, Jared had ranged the tree the buck was now rubbing at 32 yards. He was hesitant to shoot. Further, the branches prevented him from using the stand’s rail as a shooting rest, as he had hoped to do.

The buck stepped out at the edge of Jared’s comfortable shooting range.

“I told myself that it was now or never,” Jared said. “I slowly stood up, aimed and took the shot free-handed.”

At the shot, the buck bolted into the cover. Jared heard a loud crash, which he hoped was the buck falling.

“As soon as I shot, I called my dad,” he said. He kept telling me to be quiet, but I was so excited. I was practically yelling, ‘Dad, I got a big one!’”

Edward added, “He was so excited that I was afraid he was going to fall out of the tree.”

Next, Jared called his buddy to tell him what had just happened.

“Before shooting the buck, I had taken a picture of a cat walking through the opening and texted him that it was a potential state record,” Jared laughed. “Then, I called to tell him I had just shot a really big buck.”

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Edward had told Jared to quietly climb down and return home to give the buck some time. They gave it about an hour and a half, and by that time, Jared’s buddy had arrived. The three tracked the deer through cover so dense they had to crawl. The blood was consistent, but not heavy. When they got through the thicket and into open woods, they decided to play it safe and back out.

“Dad wanted to give it until morning, but I was too nervous,” Jared said. “I wanted to go back out later that night. Plus, there was a chance of rain, and I worried the blood trail would wash away.”

After giving the buck a couple more hours, the trio headed back to where they had left off. The trailing didn’t take long. Jared’s buck was piled up 50 yards beyond where they had left off. Edward noticed the animal first, and he was behind Jared and his buddy, so he pulled out his phone and began recording as they followed the trail. When Jared saw the buck, his reaction was priceless.

After backing out and giving the buck more time, Jared, his buddy and his dad went back in to pick up the trail.

Jared had been so intent on making the shot that he hadn’t really looked at the buck’s antlers. As he approached the animal, he soon realized it wasn’t the buck he thought it was.

“It just kept getting bigger the closer we got,” he said. “It was the buck from the trail camera photos Dad’s friend had shared.”

“When I saw it, I couldn’t believe it,” Edward added. “I’ve killed some big deer over the years, but I’ve never seen a buck with such a huge body. It looked like a steer lying there.” The incredible animal weighed 250 pounds, field-dressed.

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Word of the buck spread fast, and people from as far away as six miles came forward with tales and trail camera photos of the deer. Once they saw the various trail camera photos, Jared and Edward realized that, at one time, the buck had a big drop tine, but it had broken off.

The Wurths had Buckmasters scorer Toby Hughes tape the antlers. The buck’s massive 6-by-6 main frame scored 214 2/8 inches all by itself. Add in 27 ⅜ inches of abnormal points, and the final score is 241 ⅝, making it possibly the largest buck taken in Ohio this year, and ranking No. 11 all-time in the Buckmasters Crossbow Irregular category.

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