The series of events leading to opening day of the Buckeye State’s 2025 archery season were both fortunate (for Zac Keim) and unfortunate (for the giant whitetail he arrowed).
The 30-year-old concrete business owner from Applecreek, Ohio, had known about the buck since 2022, when the deer walked underneath his stand. He used his phone to video the animal at close quarters.
“When I shared the footage with my brother, he told me, ‘Dude, you’re crazy for passing that thing,’” Zac said. “Not crazy, though. The deer was young. Its antlers might’ve scored in the 140s, and I knew we had bigger deer on the (family) farm.”
He believes the whitetail was 3 1/2 years old at the time.
The following season, the buck’s rack topped out in the mid-160s,
“We named him the Trash 10 when he was 4 1/2 years old. We were watching two that year, and the other one was a clean 5x5,” Zac explained. “He was a real borderline shooter, at least originally.
“I changed my mind about him in January, when I actually saw him in a snowed-over, cut cornfield. When I committed and drew my bow, however, some other deer closer to me spooked and ruined it.”
The deer gods gave Zac a redo before the day ended, but he missed the 40-yard shot.
The deer’s 2024 rack was about 30 inches larger. Zac had it at 30 yards, but he misjudged the distance and used his 20-yard pin.
“That was a complete bummer, but at least it was a clean miss,” he said. “I just flat-out messed up on the distance. Looking back, I’m glad I did.”
The Keims began collecting trail camera images of the buck early in 2025, and Zac was thrilled to see it had survived the previous long season. He had no reason to believe it would deviate from the routines it had established since they’d begun keeping tabs on it.
“I knew his cycle,” Zac said. “We were going to see it a lot in the summer, but it almost always disappeared in October (rut month) before returning sometime in November.”
One thing was different, however. During the first five years of its life, the deer didn’t bed on the family’s 200-plus-acre farm in Coshocton County, which is mostly agricultural fields. Early-morning photos during the summer indicated that it might be bedding on the Keim place.
On Sept. 27, opening day of Ohio’s archery season, it passed in front of of Zac’s lone cell camera — the other two are conventional memory card units — about 20 minutes before legal shooting light. That off-script appearance excited Zac.
If the deer was bedding on their property, Zac reasoned there was only one spot that might hold him, a small patch of woods flanking a creek that ran out into the corn. He’d erected a stand at the edge of a field within 150 yards of the copse, close to where he’d missed the animal previously.
Zac was in the stand by 4:30 that afternoon.
“I’d forgotten that I’d hung it in a red oak,” he said. “It was dropping acorns like crazy, and squirrels were everywhere.”
Every sound, and there were plenty, merited a look. Every look revealed a squirrel. Except around 7:00, when the target buck was standing stock-still at only 30 yards. Zac had glanced that way many times and seen nothing.
“I was standing when I saw him, but I didn’t have my bow in my hand,” he explained. “I saw those long beams and the flyers and decided I’d better not look at the antlers any more. It was Trash.
“When the buck began moving, I got the opportunity to grab the bow. I grunted to stop him, but he only turned his head; kept going.
“When Trash finally did stop to make a scrape, trees blocked any shot opportunity,” he continued. “Eventually, when the deer was at 25 yards, I noticed about an 8-inch hole in the brush, and I knew I could shoot through that.”
Zac indeed threaded the needle, and he heard a bone-shattering crack as the arrow punched the buck in the shoulder.
“Turns out, I didn’t hit the shoulder blade; I hit the leg bone itself. Still, the broadhead cut through the bone, went through the chest cavity and buried into the offside shoulder,” he said.
Almost immediately, his front wheels out of commission, the giant whitetail choochooed for approximately 30 yards. Zac loaded another arrow on his string, but no amount of twisting this way and that afforded a lane through which he could send a potential coup de grace.
“I knew he was down. I could see his head was still up, though, and it was bobbing, as if he were struggling to stay awake,” he said. “Rather than risk fueling a last surge of adrenaline, I thought it best to just sit tight in the dark and call my dad, Moses, and a couple of buddies.”
The consensus was for him to leave and begin the search the next morning.
“I was back out at daybreak,” Zac said. “It was a spot-and-stalk situation, just one slow step at a time, bow in hand. Dad and my cousin remained at the truck.”
There was no need, however, since the 292 pounds of hours-old venison was lying exactly where Zac had last seen it.
“I think it probably died before I got down from the tree,” he said.
“It was an incredible feeling to close the book on this animal. If I never see another one like it, I’ll still die a happy man. Just goes to show that persistence pays, and if the Good Lord wills it, it will happen.”
Zac says he sat at least 30 times prior to 2025, hoping for a shot at this incredible buck.
“I don’t know why he wound up bedding on our place, which made the difference. Maybe there was a bully buck on the neighbor’s this year,” he postulated.
Toby and Lori Hughes measured the rack for Buckmasters, arriving at 213 2/8 inches. The 18-pointer is a mainframe 5x6 with main beams of 28 5/8 and 29 2/8 inches. Three of the uprights are more than a foot long, and the inside spread is nearly 21 inches wide.
Zac’s previous best whitetail in 11 years of serious hunting measured 175 inches.
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