Giant Ohio Buck to Be Women’s Crossbow BTR Record

Trisha Lucius almost didn’t go hunting that evening. She first asked her husband, Brian, if he planned to go. Having taken a doe the evening before, he urged her to go instead, saying he’d watch the kids if she wanted to hunt.

If she did hunt, Lucius knew exactly where she wanted to go. Even though it was the second day of the early firearm season, she grabbed her Killer Instinct crossbow and headed for a box blind the couple had built a few years earlier. It was from this blind that she had watched a monster buck cross a bean field several hundred yards away the previous year. The buck was so big that the couple nicknamed him Brutus. While they had gotten several trail cam photos of the deer, they had all been at night. The one daylight sighting a year ago was the only time Trisha had seen the buck in person.

Trisha and her husband Brian had multiple trail camera photos of the buck over 2 years, but she had only seen him once in person.

When she got to the blind, Lucius made the decision not to face the open field in front of the blind, but instead to turn and face the timbered side. The cover was thicker, but she had a feeling that deer might be hanging back in the timber before entering the open fields.

She had only been in the blind a few minutes when a young 6-point stepped out. He was in range. “I texted my husband that there was a buck in front of me and told him which one it was. I’ve only been hunting about 4 years and I’ve only taken one buck and a few does, but the past few years I’ve passed on young bucks and ended up eating my tag. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do that again this year. Brian wasn’t any help,” Lucius laughed, “He just texted back that it was my tag and my choice.”

Lucius was debating whether or not to take a smaller buck when Brutus stepped out.

Her internal debate raged for nearly a half hour as the buck fed around her blind. Then something made Lucius turn and look to her right. A massive set of antlers appeared from the cover just 60 yards away. It was Brutus. He was following a doe.

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The doe came straight toward the stand through a shooting lane they had cut. But the big buck didn’t. “Instead of following the doe, he stopped at the edge of the open lane and then started to leave. He circled the stand and came in from downwind. I could see him moving through the cover. I was shaking and breathing so hard that I had to stuff my face mask into my mouth and bite down to try to calm myself. Brutus would take two steps, stop and look around, then take two more. It seemed like forever,” Lucius said.

The big buck stopped before entering the shooting lane, then circled downwind before offering a shot.

The big buck finally made it to just 18 yards from the box blind. When he stopped, broadside, with his shoulder exposed between two trees, Lucius took careful aim and squeezed the trigger. She heard the arrow hit and the buck took off in one direction while the nearby doe ran in another. Lucius thought she heard the deer crash, and then everything got quiet.

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“I texted Brian that I had just shot Brutus,” Lucius said. “I was almost worried that he would be upset because we’ve been after him for so long, but he was just so excited for me.” He asked if she thought she had made a good shot and she told him she was pretty sure she had double lunged the buck.

The buck was nocturnal in just about every trail camera photo.

Brian told her to sit tight while he and Trisha’s brother, Michael Daring, came out to help her look for blood and trail the buck. When they got there, both her husband and her brother asked again if she thought she had made a good shot. She confirmed that she felt good about it.

The trio soon found the bolt, but not much blood. Daring again questioned her about the hit. Then they found a drop of blood, and another. The blood trail got heavier as they went.

After about 70-100 yards, they looked up from the trail to see Brutus lying there in front of them. When they got up to the deer, there were pink bubbles coming from its nostrils. Lucius elbowed her brother in the ribs and pointed out the obvious sign of a lung shot.

The buck only went 70-100 yards after the shot.

Having deer hunted most of their lives, Brian and Daring both realized immediately what Trisha had just accomplished. “They were both like, ‘Do you know what this is?’” she laughed. I just thought it was a really nice deer. I was happy that all three of us were there because his body was so big that I don’t know if two of us could have gotten him out of the woods.”

Lucius was shocked to learn her buck would be the new women’s crossbow world record in the Buckmasters semi-irregular category.

After getting the buck processed, Lucius posted a few photos on her Facebook page. Word of the giant buck quickly began to spread. Trisha was soon contacted by Buckmasters scorer Toby Hughes and his wife, Lori, about scoring the big deer. Brian and Trisha loaded up the rack and took it to Hughes.

Once he put a tape to the massive 5×5 frame with 7 additional points, heavy main beams that measured 28 inches long, and a spread of 20 4/8 inches, Hughes started adding up the scores. Toby asked Brian to step outside for a quick second so they could talk.

The big buck scored 210 inches in the BTR system.

“I didn’t know what they were talking about,” Trisha said. “When they came back in, they surprised me by telling me that I had just taken the new women’s crossbow world record in the Buckmasters semi-irregular category. I was shocked. It really was the buck of a lifetime.”