On October 2, an Ohio-based hunter traveled to Indiana and killed one of the biggest non-typical whitetails ever recorded in the Hoosier State. Chuck Crowell was hunting in a poison ivy-infested tree on leased property when he shot the enormous buck with his compound bow from 50 yards away, he tells F&S. According to Buckmasters, it scored 264 and 4/8 inches, making it the Indiana record for a bow-killed whitetail in the alternate scoring system’s irregular category.
“I saw this buck for the first time on September 21,” Crowell says. “I just ducked down in the field. About five minutes later, I lifted my head back up, and he was gone. But that gave me an idea of exactly where he was spending his time, and how big he really was.”
A Buck Called Rumor
Crowell says he’d heard stories about the deer from people in the area before spotting it in person. That’s what led him to hone in on the lease. He ultimately got permission to hunt the 40-acre parcel in Wayne County, which included the buck’s core area. He nicknamed it “Rumor” after all the stories he’d heard.
An Indiana native who now lives in south-central Ohio where he works part-time as a fishing guide, Crowell didn’t purchase his Indiana hunting license until October 1. The next day, he was in the stand hunting the massive non-typical.
“I had to rip a bunch of poison ivy off the tree just to get the stand set up, but I knew that spot would give me the best chance of intercepting him,” he says. “Around 5:30 p.m., a group of three does came out and fed in the bean field before working their way off into a nearby thicket. Then at about 6:30, I caught a glimpse of a small buck walking through an overgrown field of stick weeds. At about 7 p.m., that little buck stepped out into the open, and right behind him was the big deer I’d been after. He was about 80 yards when he first stepped into the field.”
The buck was even bigger than Crowell thought. “I was shaking like a leaf,” he recalls. “But he lingered out in the field for a good 30 minutes, so I had some time to calm my nerves.”
A Fleeting Shot Opportunity
As it fed in the bean field, the buck got increasingly closer to Crowell’s tree. When it was 50 yards out, he felt he had to take shot.
“When he finally stepped into my shooting lane broadside, he started to quarter away like he was going to feed away from me,” he says. “It was farther than I generally like to shoot, but he turned broadside to itch himself with his rack, turning his eyes completely away from me. That’s when I drew back and settled right in on him. I actually hit him in the spine—not exactly where I was aiming—but it worked out.”
The deer dropped when Crowell’s arrow connected. “When I saw him on the ground, that’s when I finally knew he was a really special deer,” he says. “I knew he was well over 200 inches, but I didn’t realize he was truly that big until I walked up on him. I just sat there in awe and took it all in. When they get to that size, it’s hard to even judge them accurately. I was just completely dumbfounded that a hang-and-hunt strategy like that actually worked out perfectly.”
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With 27 scorable points and 82 inches of non-typical growth, Crowell’s deer is one of the biggest Midwestern whitetails taken so far this season. He says he expects the Boone & Crockett and Pope & Young scores to net north of 250 inches. If they do, his buck would take the number two spot for an archery-killed deer in Indiana, edging out a 245 and 5/8-inch buck taken in Hamilton County in 2011. Crowell says that the mild case of poison ivy he picked up while hunting the buck was totally worth it.
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