Ohio has a new runner-up in BTR's Typical category for centerfire rifle. Chad Dial cleaned up opening morning of his state's 2022 rifle season, and this Holmes County hammer missed our #1 spot by 1/2 inch, totaling 195 6/8 for Buckmasters Trophy Records.
Chad first became aware of the buck when it was a 2 1/2-year-old 10-pointer. He nicknamed it Shorty because of its notoriously small brow tines.
He knew Shorty's core area and had a few close encounters with the deer, one last year when it was a 5x6, and another in October of 2022 with his bow. Then things all fell into place in late November.
"I would've taken him last year as a 3-year-old but never got a shot," Chad told Buckmasters. "That was my first encounter with him from a stand. I started getting velvet pictures of him in July this year, always in the same core areas. Then I had a light encounter with him Oct. 28. By the time he got to me, it was too dark to see past my pins, so I hung my bow back up and let him walk."
Chad didn't have a stand suitable for northwest wind, so opening morning he switched to plan B and packed in a foldable chair and set up behind a downed tree on a bank looking down into a bowl of big timber.
"I had a stand set up, but the wind was out of the northwest, so I sat off to the side of it where the wind was good," he said. "I figured he'd come through that bowl with the wind in his face heading for the next security cover. I ended up shooting him free-handed at 140 yards from the chair at 8:30 in the morning - he was heading the direction I thought he was going."
Shorty is the first deer Chad has harvested with a rifle since 2012. His second best was taken in 2017 with archery gear on the same 600-acre farm he's hunted for more than 20 years. It totaled 189 5/8 inches BTR. Both bucks were recently measured by Buckmasters master scorer Toby Hughes.
— Read Recent Blog! Brow Tines and Good Times! Jakob Lewellen's wallhanger has a BTR score of 230 6/8 inches.