Sugar Grove, Ohio - John Buehler has hunted for 23 years, but it wasn't until this year that he killed his first buck.
And what a first buck it is.
Buehler downed a 36-point buck on Oct. 6 that will likely be one of the largest animals killed this season.
On opening day of archery season, Sept. 24, Buehler bought 450 pounds of corn that he scattered about on his Fairfield County property.
"But, I didn't get to hunt that first day because I've been so busy at work," he said. "So, I went and bought another 450 pounds of corn."
In the meantime, Buehler saw the big-racked buck on his trail camera, coming to feed at night.
"I've been watching that deer for the past year and I knew that this year was his peak,"
Buehler said.
Oct. 6 finally rolled around and Buehler got his first chance to hunt this season.
So, he climbed up in his treestand and it wasn't five minutes before the big buck arrived, he said.
"I looked down and I looked back up and there he stood in a bush," Buehler said. "I could only see the rack and I couldn't count the points. He finally stepped out a little bit and exposed his body and I took the shot."
The shot from Buehler's crossbow was about a 60-yarder from his treestand.
"He went 500 yards down into a valley that's almost 100 yards straight down," the 36-year-old Buehler said. "We tried to find him that night and it was so black and dark that we couldn't stay on the blood."
So, the search resumed the next morning with Buehler and a friend helping him look.
"It took us two hours and we finally found it," he said. "At first, it was just me and another guy and we were trying to drag it and we couldn't budge it. We were moving him but not enough to get him up out of a valley."
Buehler eventually called three more men and the five of them all together were able to drag the bruiser out of the valley.
"I'd say he's all of 300 pounds dressed," he said.
Buehler, who owns a small business that paints and power washes, has been hunting for a long time. But, it will be this hunt that he remembers forever.
Buehler is hoping for entry into the Ohio Big Buck Club once the official score is recorded. As of this writing, he hadn't had it green scored yet.
"It's still early in the season," Buehler said. "There's more (big bucks) out there for someone else to get."
