Ninety Inches in Two Seasons
By Mike Handley
Chad Campbell first became acquainted with the deer he shot in 2024 two years earlier, when it was a 20-inch-wide 8-pointer with a few flyers. He was in a vehicle with his buddy and a nephew.
The propane delivery driver from Walton, Indiana, was duly impressed, but he didn’t consider the deer as anything more than an up-and-comer.
The whitetail’s status changed in 2023, however, when its rack gained close to 60 inches. Chad and his father, Charles, glassed it many times as it traveled with a bachelor group of bucks. Three trail cameras were amassing photos of it as well.
When the monstrous buck disappeared for two weeks, Chad feared the worst and reluctantly began hunting another impressive buck his cameras had cataloged. He wound up shooting yet another one wearing a nearly 157-inch rack, while his father settled for a bookend specimen that went 155.
With their tags filled, Chad put his wife, Amber, on the deer. She saw it pushing a doe at 23 yards, but it wouldn’t give her a shot.
Amber hunted the next four days, hoping for another chance, but they never saw the animal again.
After the ’23 season closed, a buddy called to say he’d seen the big one; had even photographed it.
Weeks after setting out cameras on the 9-acre patch in 2024, Chad came to the harsh realization the deer might have been hit by a car during the summer. He didn’t collect a single image of it until a month prior to Indiana’s bow opener.
With renewed determination, the 46-year-old moved his cameras and even gained permission to hunt the adjacent 20 acres. The landowner had seen the buck, too. Chad began calling the deer Medusa.
Chad had to work opening day, but his propane route took him past the tracts he could hunt. When he saw lots of vehicles parked along that stretch of road, his heart sank.
Oh, my god. Everybody’s hunting Medusa, he thought.
That morning, one of his cameras sent him a photo of the deer making a scrape under his 22-foot ladder stand.
“I took off work at 1:30,” he said. “I just told my boss, ‘There’s something I gotta do.’ He knew what I meant.”
Chad spent the next six hours in his stand but saw nothing cross his two shooting lanes beside the swamp. The next afternoon, Oct. 2, he told his father he was going to hunt a different place, where a wide 8-pointer had been photographed.
“Dad said, ‘You’re nuts. If you don’t hunt there, I’m going to that stand.’ So I went back there,” he laughed. “Even so, I didn’t have high hopes.”
There wasn’t much activity. He’d seen only a small buck and a doe and two fawns feeding in the honeysuckle when his buddy sent him a text: Are you seeing anything?
“No. I think I’m wasting my time,” he replied before shoving his phone in his pocket.
With only 45 minutes of daylight remaining, Chad realized his bladder must be the size of a cantaloupe. Just as he was about to leave a little early, he heard a stick break in the cattails ahead. A deer … a buck … the big one … was approaching.
Quit looking at the rack, he admonished himself.
He picked up his crossbow and gently laid it across his stand’s rail as the whitetail exited the cattails, stopped, and then looked both ways before continuing. When it resumed walking toward the palpitating hunter, only its chest and head were visible.
The first time Chad ranged it, the deer was at 34 yards.
When it was another 10 yards closer, just as Chad had convinced himself to take the ill-advised chest shot, the deer veered toward a honeysuckle patch.
“I knew if it made the honeysuckle, it was game over,” he said. “I was a little unstrung, but I bleated and stopped him, and then I took the shot.”
The buck immediately squirted in the brambles, almost silently. Chad never heard the bolt hit, and the crash for which he was praying never shattered the stillness.
“I sincerely thought I screwed up,” he said, “but then I heard three coughs and knew I must’ve hit the deer in the lungs. I mean, what else could that noise have been?”
Chad called his father.
“Dad, I just smoked him, I think.”
Dad: The big one? What do you mean, YOU THINK?
Chad: I didn’t hear the arrow hit, and I didn’t hear a crash. But I did hear what sounded like three coughs … Hold on. I’ll call you back.
Chad got down and walked to the bolt with the glowing nock. It was covered in blood. He then began crawling through the honeysuckle to look for more blood, but he found none.
“I was getting bent out of shape,” he said, “so I called my best friend, Zach, and then I called Dad again ‘Where are you?’ I asked him. ‘You told me to wait,’ he replied.”
His dad arrived first. Per Chad’s recollection of the deer’s path, they plunged into the honeysuckle. When they could find no sign, they backed out and returned to where the bolt had come to rest. While Chad stubbornly went back into the brambles, his father chose a different path and eventually found the blood trail, which led to the neighbor’s fence.
Gaining permission to cross the property is a whole ‘nother story, which will be included in the magazine article to be published later this year. But Chad, his friend Zach and Chad’s dad did get the green light and followed the dots to the downed buck.
Chad took the next day off from work in order to deliver the deer to his taxidermist.
The north central Indiana deer hasn’t been scored for Buckmasters yet, but it’s been officially taped for the Hoosier record book at 229 4/8 inches (gross). It’s the grandfather-of-two’s best in 37 years of hunting.