Logan Urban was hunting on the ground with a crossbow on October 5 when the biggest buck he's ever seen stepped into a bean field, about 200 yards away. Urban had been patterning and observing the enormous whitetail since July he tells Field & Stream—so when it closed the gap to just 30 yards and began quartering towards him earlier this month, the accomplished young hunter was ready to take his shot.
"For the first three weeks before the season started, I watched him every single night like clockwork," Urban says. "On opening day (September 28) we saw him come across our field after he winded the neighbor. We thought he'd be gone after that. A lot of people were after this deer."
Urban and his father Ray began hearing about the deer three years ago and found one of its sheds last year on the private property they hunt in northern Ohio. "He was around 86 or 87 inches on that left side when we found the shed last year," Ray says. "This year, that same side measure 125 inches. He blew up by more than 40 inches."
They had run-ins with the buck during the 2023 deer season, when it scored around 170, but never any legitimate shot opportunities. It didn't show up again until mid-July 2024, when Logan spotted it in the same soy bean field where he'd eventually shoot it. It showed up on trail camera on separate occasions in July and August, and by mid-September, Logan had the deer's pattern down to a science.
After watching it bump off the neighbor's property on opening day, Logan spotted the buck again on Friday, October 4. "I had to sit on the opposite side of the field that night because the wind was wrong," he says. "I watched him get to within 30 yards of the spot where we usually hunt when the wind is good."
Logan set up by himself around 4 p.m. the following afternoon, he says. He was hidden behind brush in the corner of the bean field when he watched the deer slip out into the open yet again. This time, it was about 200 yards away when it emerged. "He picked his way through the beans and eventually got to within 70 yards, and that's when I started shaking a little bit," he says. "I don't usually get excited because I've shot some big deer over the years, but this was a different story."
Urban's dad started taking him hunting when he was just three-years old, he says. He killed his first deer at age ten, and has shot multiple deer above 150 inches since then. In the off-season, he competes in archery tournaments where he's earned both state and national titles.
When the deer closed the gap and began to veer off to Urban's right, he hit it with a perfect double-lung shot. "He ran about 80 yards through the field and then somersaulted and fell to the ground," he says. "Then he got back up and started running again, but he only went 30 more yards before he died."
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A few days later, Logan and Ray took the buck's antlers to longtime Buckmasters scorer Toby Hughes in Caledonia, Ohio. Hughes, who has scored countless Ohio bucks over the years and several giants since the start of the 2024 season, said he was dumbfounded by the deer's mass, main beam length, and the size of its palmated brow tines. He scored it at an astonishing 260 7/8 inches BTR.
