Why Mom-in-law’s Christmas Party Started Late
By Mike Handley
Brandy Nedolast got her Christmas present three days early in 2024, and it wasn’t even wrapped.
Until afterward, for the freezer.
On Sunday, Dec. 22, the last day of Ohio’s rifle season, the 31-year-old maintenance clerk and her husband, Nathan, decided to spend the remains of the day in a deer stand before taking their three children to his mother’s home for a Christmas celebration. She carried her .450 Bushmaster rifle, which she’d won in a raffle four years earlier, and he was armed with a .444 Marlin, both among the straight-walled cartridge spitters sanctioned by the state.
The five-year-married couple from New Washington, Ohio, often hunts together during the short rifle season, and this was her third outing of the year.
The temperature was in the upper 20s, but falling as they climbed into the double ladder stand around 4:00. Forty-five minutes into their vigil, she lost all faith in her shake-em-up hand-warmers and convinced her hus-band to abandon the cold.
The Nedolasts took their time. The woodlot in which they were hunting is surrounded by agricultural fields, and they thought deer might be on their feet, eager to stoke their furnaces.
As the couple approached the edge of the timber, still 15 minutes from their front door, they spotted a group of deer in the field. A dusting of snow on the ground made the animals stand out like spots on a Dalmation.
Brandy decided the animals were beyond her comfortable shooting range, so Nathan took aim and dropped a forkhorn.
Less than a minute after the boom, Brandy saw more deer appear above the crown on the other side of the field, and one of them was a large buck.
“It happened so quickly, I was unprepared,” she said. “Nathan and I were standing pretty far apart, so we didn’t plan anything; didn’t discuss it. We couldn’t even whisper. I just looked at him and said, ‘Aim high?’ and he replied, ‘Aim high.’
“It was an insane moment,” she added.
The 250-yard shot was dead on, and the deer — like Nathan’s — died in the field, 20 yards from where it ab-sorbed the bullet.
“I had no time at all, so I guess that helped. I wasn’t nervous like I normally get whenever I see a deer,” she said.
They tagged Nathan’s little buck first, and then went to her 13-pointer. After loading the animals onto their ATV, they took them to Nathan’s grandfather’s home to show him.
The Nedolasts had no idea a buck of that caliber inhabited or passed through that corner of Huron County, although at least one other hunter knew about the deer. He supplied them with trail camera photographs of the double-dropper.
“We didn’t weigh the deer, but everyone says it must have been 300 pounds. It took three of us to load it onto the fourwheeler,” she said. “We didn’t age it either, but since the other person had been hunting it for a cou-ple of years, we figure it was probably between 5 and 7 years old.”
Lori and Toby Hughes measured the huntress’ second-ever deer for Buckmasters, arriving at 186 4/8 inches. The drop tines measured 7 and 6 3/8 inches.