It’s not often that a mature trophy whitetail shows up in daylight hours in October, much less eight times in the first three weeks of the season. But that’s exactly what happened to Mark Dunn of Mechanicsburg, Ohio, who shot a 233-inch buck on a 30-acre tract near his home roughly one week ago.
“He drove me crazy for three weeks,” Dunn tells Field & Stream. “I don't know about you, but I've never heard of a buck that size daylighting so many times that early in the season.”
Though he can’t prove it, Dunn suspects that he captured trail cam photos of the same deer last year before it developed the giant drop tine that now falls off the right side of its main beam. “This buck’s got the same three-bladed brow tines the deer in those photos had, and I've never seen that characteristic around here ever,” he says. “If it’s the same deer, my son actually had a chance to take him last year but passed on him.”
Dunn had all but forgotten about the buck with the three-bladed brows when the above deer showed up on his trail cam on the morning of Ohio’s archery opener—Saturday, September 28. He was hunting a different property at the time, less than a quarter mile away.
“I didn't have any stands set up on that 30-acre plot when I got his photo on opening day,” he says. “So I put two stands out on the Sunday after opening day in the pouring rain while Hurricane Helene was rolling through Ohio.”
Dunn contended with heavy, swirling winds as the remnants of Helene moved through the area, but somehow he still managed to have multiple encounters with the big drop-tined buck. “He was spending a lot of time on a neighbor’s property who doesn’t allow hunting,” he says. “Then he would come into my woods through a field with super tall grass. I think he felt like he was pretty concealed and secure.”
On Saturday, October 19, the buck walked to within 70 yards of Dunn’s stand, he says, but never gave him a decent shot. “Then on Sunday, I had a perfect west wind,” Dunn recalls. “Sure enough, around 8:15, he came in through that field of tall grass and gave me a 27-yard broadside shot.”
Related: Ohio Hunter Arrows 216-Inch Trail-Cam-Eluding Ghost Buck
Dunn, who shot the massive buck with a crossbow, took its rack to Toby Hughes of Buckmasters Ohio who scored it at 233 ⅞ inches BTR. According to Hughes' scoring data, it had a 19 and 6/8-inch inside spread, more than 41 inches of mass, and an irregular points total of 53 and 6/8 inches.
