In early October Craig Meyers, 33, from Portland, Michigan, was monitoring trail cameras positioned around a 1-acre food plot he’d been hunting for several years in east-central Ohio. Meyers was after a giant whitetail he called “Krabs,” because one of its droptines was a huge palmated appendage that looked like a crab claw.
“I’d been watching that buck for three years, from when he was only a 140-inch deer,” Meyers tells Outdoor Life. “I had an encounter with him last year when he was a 175-inch buck but didn’t get a chance at him.”
This year, however, Meyers learned from his cameras that the double-droptine buck was frequenting a food plot he hunted and was regularly traveling with three other bucks.
“He was always with those three other bucks, and one was a nice 10-pointer,” says Meyers, a professional millwright. “He was very smart and used the other deer as sentinels to [warn] of danger.”
From trail camera photos, Meyers noticed the buck was feeding late in the day on the food plot, where he had an elevated blind. In late September, Meyers hunted his blind with a less than ideal wind and only saw the smaller bucks in the bachelor group.
“I didn’t get him on camera again for two days after that, but the other bucks fed in the plot,” Meyers explained. “Krabs was older and smarter than the other deer.”
After two days the big buck began returning to the food plot with the others, and a few does. The morning of Oct. 3, Meyers again learned via trail cameras that Krabs often fed, then exited the food plot along a certain field edge. Meyers suspected the deer bedded nearby.
If his hunch was correct, the buck generally seemed to have the wind in his favor to feed into the plot again that afternoon. But when Meyers checked the weather one day, he noticed the afternoon forecast predicted a complete 180-degree shift in wind direction. It would be blowing in the opposite direction from when Krabs left the food plot that morning.
“I knew this was my chance,” says Meyers. “The wind would be in my favor, and not his.”
That blistering hot afternoon found Meyers in his stifling fiberglass blind. He’d even sealed it with tape to prevent his scent from drifting out of his blind. It was so hot inside the blind, Meyers used ice packs on his chest and back to keep cool.
“It was brutal when I got inside the blind. But as the sun settled in the west, deer started to show.”
First a doe showed in the field. Then, one by one, the three bucks that hung with the big double-droptine buck entered the field.
“They were all head down, relaxed and feeding,” Meyers says. “I was looking at the 10-pointer, then turned to see Krabs coming into the plot about 60 yards away. I wasn’t going to try him until he got to 40 yards, and I kept ranging him as he walked closer.”
When the buck got to 40 yards he raised his crossbow through the now-open window and squeezed the trigger.
His arrow struck just behind the buck’s shoulder, and broke the opposite shoulder blade. The deer dropped, then made his way to the timber. Meyers heard thrashing in thick brush as he climbed down.
“I knew he was done, and the blood trail was incredible,” Meyers says. “He didn’t go 80 yards from where I shot him to where he fell.”
Meyers phoned friends and family with the good news. Then with help from the landowner, Meyers loaded the field dressed deer into a farm truck and packed it in ice under heavy tarps.
The next morning, the nontypical was green-scored by Mike Rex, president of the Buckeye Buck Club, which uses the standard Boone and Crockett Club scoring system. The buck’s gross score is 225 1/8 inches, with a net score of 217 4/8 inches. Meyers says the deer may be a county record. No hunter-killed nontypical in Perry County has surpassed the 200-inch mark, according to the B&C records. Meyers’ buck could easily outstrip the current county record, a picked-up skull from 2017 that measured 203 6/8 inches.
Meyers estimates the buck was 6.5 years old; the butcher who processed it told him the dressed buck weighed 225 pounds.
“We canned the meat from Krabs, because my wife, Kearstyn, loves venison like that,” Meyers said. “We got 26 quarts of canned venison – done just the way my parents make, which is delicious.”
Despite his hard work patterning the buck and making the shot count, Meyers says his dad, Don, should get the recognition.
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“My dad got me into bowhunting, and because of him I was able to get my buck. My truck needed some work done on it to drive to my hunting spot. Dad fixed it so I could get to my blind. All credit for taking Krabs goes to him.”
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