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190” felled in Scioto County
By Patrick Dunning
Meghan Hill was beginning to believe harvesting a mature buck wasn’t in the cards for 2023. She passed on three 130-class bucks with her compound bow earlier in the season and had a couple shooters on camera for a stint, but they disappeared once the rut commenced.
The 24-year-old still held a tag after Ohio’s initial rut phase but her outlook was grim.
“It took everything in me to pass those deer up but I held strong because I wanted to shoot a big one. I typically bow hunt, and at that point in the season, it was getting cold and I still hadn’t punched my tag,” Meghan told Buckmasters. “When this deer showed up for the first time the morning of November 17, I had a change of heart real quick.”
Now Meghan holds Ohio’s #4 spot in BTR’s semi-irregular category for centerfire rifle, and #1 in the state among women respectively, after harvesting this 190-inch mystery buck in early December.
Meghan and her husband situated their ground blind on a 200-acre private tract in a patch of woods that funnels into a ravine where they identified 10 active scrapes.
Friday evening December 1, the 8x7 came from Meghan’s left by itself to check a scrape just before 5 p.m. and she freehanded a lethal 49-yard shot with her single shot .45-70 rifle.
“The shot was a little shaky and the wind was blowing straight into the bottom where he was, so I knew I needed to get off a shot fast. He quartered toward me a little, I put it on his shoulder and sent it,” Meghan recalled. “After the shot he took four steps, flipped his tail, turned back to look my direction and walked off so nonchalantly. I could’ve sworn I missed and called my husband in a panic.”
After some motivation from her husband, she gathered her emotions and was able to identify her target buck piled up 80 yards from the ground blind.
Buckmasters master scorer Scott Beam measured the Scioto County buck 191 2/8 inches as a 15-pointer.