Ohio Hunter Bags Local Legend Buck

Some bucks live their entire life without being seen by a hunter, dying of old age or natural causes. And then there are bucks that everyone knows about. The giant Ohio whitetail taken by Ben Cramer falls into the latter category.

“This is a small town and this buck was extremely visible,” Cramer said. “You could just about set your clock by him and see him easily from the nearby highway. Folks would come out all summer just to drive by and watch him feed in the ag fields. He had been around for years and everyone knew him.”

The buck was well known in the area and several hunters had been chasing him for years. All images by Ben Cramer

But that local notoriety didn’t make the buck easy to hunt. All of the area hunters chased the legend each fall. And, at the end of each season, he’d still be there to put on another show the following summer.

Cramer was able to get a few trail camera photos of the buck before season.

This season, Cramer got permission to hunt a farm near the buck’s home area. He put out trail cameras and was excited to get a few photos of the buck, but the images were always at night and never revealed a consistent pattern. Undeterred, Cramer picked a good looking spot with several nearby deer trails and hung a stand. He reasoned that he better hunt the buck as early in the fall as possible, because the deer might move completely out of the area once the rut kicked in. He hunted consistently through the early season and passed up several other bucks, hoping for a chance at the local giant.

The buck was always extremely visible before summer, but would disappear once hunting pressure increased.

On October 17th, the wind and weather were good for a morning hunt and Cramer slipped into his stand well before daylight. “I had a few does pass by in the dark, then it got light enough to see and another doe came by. She was still hanging around when a pair of raccoons started messing around behind me. I’d been watching them for a while and had turned my attention back to the doe when I heard walking behind me. At first, I thought it was just the raccoons, but I slowly turned to look, just in case,” Cramer said.

What he saw was far from a raccoon. It was the biggest buck he had ever seen and it was standing just 40 yards away. “I swear, that buck looked right at me and locked his eyes on mine for a split second. I thought it was over, but then the doe out in front of me moved and he quit looking at me and turned his head to look at her,” Cramer said.

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The giant buck started to walk toward the nearby doe. Thirty yards, then 20. The buck finally paused, broadside, and right in one of Cramer’s shooting lanes. He raised his crossbow, took aim, and squeezed the trigger.

The big buck wheeled at the shot and went crashing through the nearby cover. Then the woods got quiet. Everything had happened so quickly that Cramer hadn’t had time to get excited. The adrenaline pumping through his system now caught up with him and he had to will himself to calm down. “I thought to myself, did that really just happen? I couldn’t believe it.”

Cramer called his wife, then his dad while he gave the buck plenty of time to expire.

After making the shot, Cramer talked to his dad while giving the buck some time to expire.

Finally, he climbed down to look for his bolt, but he couldn’t find it. “I usually get pass throughs with this setup and I expected to see my lighted nock, but it wasn’t there,” Cramer said.

Then he saw a couple drops of blood. Then a couple more. He started down the trail, but didn’t want to push because he had never heard the buck crash after the shot.

Not wanting to push the buck, Cramer was about to back out when he looked up to see a white belly at the field edge.

After talking with his dad again, Cramer decided to follow a bit more. Just as he was exiting the timber into a nearby field, he looked up to see a white belly just 75 yards away.

“I did get a pass through, but the fletching was still inside the buck, that’s why I couldn’t see my nock. He went down in the edge of the field, so I guess that is why I didn’t hear him crash from the stand,” Cramer said.

The giant buck had a total of 27 scorable points, including multiple drops.

Cramer quickly realized that the buck was massive, both in body and rack size. “That’s the one thing I regret, not getting a weight on him,” he said. “This deer was huge.” After getting him out of the woods and processed, Cramer met with certified Buckmasters scorer Toby Hughes to get his buck measured.

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The massive 5x5 frame had a total of 27 scorable points. There were 61 inches of abnormal antler and a whopping 41 inches of mass measurements. The final score was an eye popping 225 ⅞ on the Buckmasters system. Cramer’s taxidermist estimated the buck at a minimum of 8 or 9 years old, matching the timeline supplied by area folks who were familiar with seeing the deer. Cramer sent off a tooth to get an exact age on the buck. “It makes you wonder,” Cramer said. “How does a buck this well-known known live that long with that many people hunting him each fall? I still can’t believe I was the one to finally tag him.”