In 2024, Ohio farmer David Hostetler raised his 12-gauge slug gun to shoot a running, trophy-sized buck. He fired at 50 yards, only to miss. No need to ask how he felt about that.
David had no way to know that he’d meet the buck again at the opening of Marion County’s 2026 bow season.
The silver lining: In the intervening years, that deer’s rack grew to more than 231 inches.
David’s workload, running a combine during the harvest season, wouldn’t normally let him hunt as early as Sept. 12, but Ohio’s DSA exception for several counties gives him and farmers like him two weeks of extra hunting opportunities. (Bag limits in DSA counties are more generous, about six deer per season.)
That afternoon, around 3:30, David climbed 20 feet to his hang-on stand in a cottonwood overlooking a food plot that he, his brother Bennie and nephew Elmer had planted in clover and radishes.
“Our trail cameras showed the huge buck visiting the garden in late afternoon. We could see lots of kickers — what we call flyers — coming off the back of him, so we nicknamed him Flyer.”
The property where David hunted is owned by his boss.
“This section has a creek forming the outside border, a pond tied in with the creek, and eight trees in between the creek and pond,” he says. “Corn grew on three sides, beans were to my right and the pond was at my 4 o’clock. Flyer would go to a neighbor’s timber to bed. Bennie and Elmer first saw my buck in early July. There were more sightings after that. I was just the lucky one to be there when he came to the food.”
David says his hunting style is a blend of old-school scouting and new tech reliance on cell cameras.
“I like to get out and do a lot of scouting. In summer, I go out before dark and sit in fields and watch deer with binoculars. On the other hand, cams help you pattern a buck and keep its movements on record. In 2025, I had him on camera.”
After four hours on stand, David saw a pair of small bucks a few hundred yards away. He saw some movement beyond the small deer. He detected Flyer's unmistakable antlers coming out of shrubs along the creek where the deer had been drinking.
“I saw him take a drink from the creek at 70 yards,” David recalls. “Then he followed a small buck walking toward me. He was moving head on, slowly, browsing casually. This went on for about 15 minutes.”
At that time, he jumped across the 6-foot-wide creek and walked up to the food plot.
David stood when the buck closed the distance to 20 yards. An arrow with a lighted nock was on his bowstring.
“I was prepared to shoot, but the angle was poor. My arrow would have hit his spine or head. Gradually, he turned slightly, then a little more.”
When David thought he’d get penetration, he drew and shot.
“I kind of gut shot him but got some vitals. He jumped and ran 15 yards and stopped, head down. Then he lay down but was still moving.”
David’s next step was to get a drone overhead with a thermal reader on it. At 11:30 p.m., the deer was still moving and its head lifted up. The next morning, in heavy fog, the drone showed that the buck was gone.
David fought panic.
But the buck was recovered 80 yards away, next to the creek where it died.
David, Bennie and Elmer had tried to guess all summer what the buck would score, if and when one of them shot it.
“I guessed 202,” says David. “Trail cam pictures can be deceiving. After the velvet came off, it looked smaller.”
The trio had their pick of other places to hunt that day, on the 5,000-acre farm. Bennie went to a spot where he was doe-hunting for jerky, and Elmer wanted to go shoot another buck he’d seen elsewhere, leaving David to the food plot. None of them came close to guessing Flyer’s true bounty.
Buckmasters master scorer Toby Hughes taped the deer with an official score of 231 4/8 inches.