Before last fall, Anders Blixt had no idea he lives only eight hours from Heaven.
The Virginian had a hunch deer hunting's pearly gates were somewhere in Ohio, which is why he and a friend, Tyson Kuhu, leased land there seven years ago. Still, he had no reason to think he'd zeroed in on them until 2021.
Anders' introduction to the Buckeye State came when he and Tyson booked a hunt with an Adams County outfitter. Shortly after setting up the hunt, he learned his wife was pregnant, and the due date was that very week.
Rather than postpone the trip for a year, his outfitter suggested the guys use their deposits to lease land from him. The arrangement was perfect and productive.
In February 2021, Anders and his wife bought a tract with a cabin adjacent to the land he'd been hunting since 2015. It's an eight-hour drive from their home in Carson, Virginia.
Trail cameras later revealed that a buck he and Tyson had been watching was sometimes visiting the new ground. Anders also saw the whitetail they'd nicknamed Buzz the first time he hunted the place.
While the Blixt clan was in church on Nov. 28, Anders' phone vibrated as photos of Buzz arrived. Understandably, he couldn't wait to return to his home away from home.
The family went to their Ohio cabin two days later, where Anders ushered in December. After an uneventful morning hunt, he tried something different - rattling - during the afternoon sit. His eldest daughter had suggested the tactic.
Only minutes after tickling the bones, he spotted his wish-list buck circling him. Before it could get downwind, Anders mouth-bleated to stop it so he could make the 80-yard shot.
Afterward, the buck tucked tail and appeared to stumble downhill into a ditch.
Although it was raining, the whole family was there for the recovery of the 23-pointer.
"I was relieved to see him lying belly up in that ditch," he told Hunter Schmittou, who's writing the story for Rack magazine. "That was the moment I had dreamed of and had prayed for so many times. It meant so much more that my family and friends were there."
Anders' buck scores 218 3/8 inches as an Irregular, making it the third-largest for Ohio in the BTR's centerfire rifle category.
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