Vern Evans
Veteran bowhunter Mark Dunn and his wife Carrie started scouting a family-owned property in Champaign County, Ohio, this fall. While walking the 80-acre parcel in September during the lead-up to bow season, they pinpointed a draw that looked like a good travel corridor.
“We put out three trail cameras to learn what was going on there, and we got photos right away of a giant buck,” Dunn tells Outdoor Life. “I knew I needed to slip back out there soon and put up a couple tree stands.”
Dunn waited until heavy rains from hurricane Helene were passing through the area to offer some cover.
“I figured the rain would be a good time to set stands so as not to disturb that buck,” says Dunn, who lives in Mechanicsburg. “I put stands in different spots so the place could be hunted during varying wind directions.”
Dunn left for a Wyoming elk hunt soon after. He tagged a cow, but his mind was still on the big nontypical at home.
“The whole time I was thinking about that buck back in Ohio. I got back on a Saturday, saw him from a stand on Monday, and killed him six days later.”
Dunn says he saw the deer in person eight times. It was always during the evening, and every time the buck would walk just out range. Finally, he decided to try a morning hunt instead. By the time the sixth day rolled around, on Oct. 20, the moon was bright and mostly full. He worried he might spook the deer as he crossed a field on the way to his stand in the moonlight.
“I walked to my stand at 5:30 a.m., almost two hours before shooting light,” Dunn recalls. “I wanted to be in there long before daybreak.”
Around 8 a.m., Dunn spotted the giant buck at 140 yards walking out of a field. The deer strolled along the draw towards Mark. He thinks the buck was headed to a stand of oak trees that were loaded with acorns. The deer stayed on course and finally stopped broadside to Dunn’s stand at 27 yards. He raised his Raven R10 crossbow and sent a two-blade, 100-grain broadhead behind its shoulder.
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“He ran hard across the field, got to its edge, stopped, wobbled, and fell,” Dunn says. “I couldn’t see him on the ground because the grass was high there. So, I phoned Carrie and told her I shot the buck. Then I waited there for 90 minutes because I didn’t want to risk jumping the deer if it was still alive.”
Dunn eventually headed back to his truck and called a friend, who helped him field dress and load up the huge whitetail. They took the dressed deer back to Dunn’s home, where it weighed 235 pounds on a farm scale. He later took the buck to Ohio Buckmasters scorer Toby Hughes, who gave it a BTR score of 233 7/8s.
“It had 21 scoreable points with 7-inch bases,” Dunn explains. “Its main beams are each over 26 inches long, and we think it was at least 6.5 years old.
He says it’s his biggest buck to date, topping the 190-inch whitetail that’s already on his wall along with about 30 other Ohio bucks. And after seeing the rack up-close, he realized they’d seen the same buck on a nearby property last year.
“We had trail camera photos of [this same buck], and he was a giant in 2023, scoring about 160 inches. My son could have taken him last year, but he didn’t,” Dunn says. “And I’m glad he didn’t. Because that deer’s rack just exploded in a year’s time.”
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