When It's so Cold It Hurts
By Mike Handley
When Ben Smith retrieved a few trail camera images of a 10-pointer in 2022, he knew it had the potential to be something special, but his resolve to let it grow was never really tested. He never saw the animal in the flesh.
The whitetail was sufficiently big enough the following year to tempt even the most discriminating hunter, but it stopped passing through Ben's property in mid-October.
"Clearly, it wasn't spending all of its time on my place," said the 39-year-old street department foreman from Sidney, Ohio.
He knows not where the buck hung out, however.
"I think I have a pretty good relationship with the neighbors. Nobody ever mentioned this deer, and I didn't hear of anyone shooting one that big in the area."
Ben was relieved when one of his cameras recorded the buck in August 2024, three or four days after he set it up near a big pear tree. The deer's new rack was even more impressive.
Fifteen acres of the family's land is pure thicket, and one of his cameras was collecting images of the buck coming and going. Ben didn't think it was bedding in there, but it was circling through regularly, checking out other deer. The place is riddled with scrapes and rubs.
When September arrived, the megabuck was there every day within a 3 1/2-hour time span, and it was always preceded or followed by another buck with a rack in the 160s. Ben was walking on the clouds, certain he'd get a shot at the deer on opening day of bow season.
That didn't happen.
Instead of coming through every day, the buck's routine became every three days, and then once every five days. Eventually, as was the case in 2022 and 2023, it disappeared altogether.
Ben generally hunts another piece of ground during the state's gun season, and he did shoot a doe off it. On Wednesday, Dec. 4, however, he was supposed to take his 10-year-old son, one of his three children, hunting where the big one had been photographed early in the season.
"I even picked Beau up from school so we could get out to one of two blinds on the property," he said. "As soon as we got home to change, he decided it was just too cold and windy. I couldn't really blame him."
Ordinarily, since he was alone, Ben would've climbed into a treestand. But it was far too windy for that. He wound up going to a blind overlooking a picked cornfield, an 800-yard hike.
En route, he skirted a thicket and jumped a deer.
What am I doing? I'm probably wasting my time, he thought.
Ben reached the blind a little past 4:00. To keep out the stiff wind, which was blowing in his face, he opened only half the windows. He'd not hunted it that year.
Soon afterward, a friend sent him a text asking if he'd seen anything. The answer was no, and he didn't really expect to. Ben thought he was wasting his time, freezing when he could be home with his family.
An hour and 10 minutes later and with maybe a half-hour remaining of legal daylight, five bucks came into the corn stubble. Soon, Ben noticed a sixth deer — possibly the big one — at 110 yards, staring at the others before committing to join them.
The buck was walking away from him, at 175 yards, when it stopped. Knowing he'd get no better opportunity, Ben squeezed his .450 Bushmaster's trigger.
Although the deer might have flinched at the shot, it didn't act as if it had been hit. Unable to determine the shot's origin, it actually ran 50 yards closer before stopping again, so Ben squeezed off another round. Like before, seemingly unhurt, the buck ran to within 110 yards and froze again.
That time, Ben aimed and hit the buck facing him squarely in the chest. It didn't run after that; just collapsed.
There were still 15 minutes of daylight remaining when he walked up to the buck. As he drew near, he noticed the rack's forked brow tines and realized for the first time that he'd shot the big one.
"I was blessed, no doubt about it," he said. "Of course, I put a lot of time into hunting that deer. I probably hunted 35 times during the season, thanks to my wife Stevie's patience and understanding.
"As soon as I got home, Beau was already dressed in his coveralls and cap, waiting for me 100 yards outside the house," he chuckled. "He couldn't wait to see it."
Ben thinks the buck was at least 5 1/2 years old, based on its 10-point rack a couple of years earlier. He didn't weigh the deer, but he says it was smaller — perhaps rut-worn — than other deer taken in the area. Still, it might've weighed between 225 and 250 pounds on the hoof.
Scott Beam measured the rack for Buckmasters, arriving at 203 5/8 inches. The 17-pointer, a mainframe 5x5 with five irregular points, fell into the record book's Semi-Irregular category (for antler configurations that aren't exactly typical or non-typical).
The state's new No. 4 for the category and the largest such specimen ever recorded from Shelby County will be Ben's seventh deer mount.
"This was a dream come true," Ben said.