Ohio hunter arrows massive non-typical buck after a second encounter

St. Paris, Ohio — Zac Prickett was fortunate enough to have two encounters this past fall with a massive buck he had been watching since last year.

The second such encounter paid off for Prickett on Nov. 1 when he arrowed the 22-point, non-typical buck.

“It was definitely something magical for sure,” the St. Paris hunter said. “I had him last year and he was probably in the mid-170s. I was hunting another deer so I thought just to let him go another year to see what he’d turn into.”

Prickett picked back up on the buck this past July when he captured a trail cam photo.

“He was just a ball of junk,” Prickett said of the buck’s antlers. “You could tell he was really going to be something. I pretty much never let him leave my sight from that point.”

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Prickett knew where the buck he had nicknamed “Junkie” because of its enormous rack was bedding and hanging out during the daylight hours. Prickett was still getting trail cam photos of the deer and also watching him with a spotting scope.

“He wouldn’t hit minerals very much,” Prickett said. “I just think it’s a high mineral area, a lot of good minerals in the dirt. Early season in July leading into the middle of August I would maybe get one or two (trail cam) pictures a week but I was watching him every day through the spotting scope.”

The first encounter with “Junkie” for Prickett came on the second day of bow season when he had him at 8 yards, but was busted by a wandering doe.

When November rolled around, Prickett expected to have a good chance of having the buck within archery range if he hadn’t already been harvested by another hunter or, God forbid, poached.

“Nov. 1 was a cold morning and I was sitting in the corner of a fencerow,” he said. “I really didn’t see much. Saw a button buck in the morning, but not much else. It was probably 45 minutes later and as I looked to my right a big doe had stepped out into the field. She had come down, read the script, and walked on through. Probably 30 minutes later, I had a 140-ish buck come out on the trail about 20 yards to my right. He went on up into the woods just like the rest of them did.”

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Like Prickett said earlier, it was a cold morning in Champaign County on Nov. 1.

“A bit later, I turned around to look behind me and all I could see was the steam from a deer’s breath,” he said. “All I could see was the steam. I couldn’t see a deer, but I knew it was a deer.”

A few minutes later, a group of about eight does appeared in the gloaming.

“I knew that typically when I saw those does that I would see him,” he said. “The does walked right past me and jumped the fence. I turned around again and could still see some steam coming from behind me. It was him.”

Prickett got just a glimpse of the buck’s rack, but it was enough.

“I had watched this deer so long that I could tell you about every inch of his body,” he said.

The big buck followed the same trail as the does had before him, jumped the fence, and ended up about 10 yards from Prickett’s position.

“I double-lunged him and he ran about 100 yards out in front of me into a picked bean field and that’s where the picture was taken,” he said.

Buckmasters green-scored the 22-point non-typical at 228-7⁄8 and said it is the largest non-typical ever shot with a compound bow in Champaign County and the second largest ever killed with any implement.

At the time of this interview, Prickett was waiting on a Boone and Crockett scorer to officially tape the deer.

“The buck definitely lifted some heads here in the county,” he said.