Apparently, lightning can strike more than once. And for bowhunter Daniel Cremeans, three shots were the charm for a huge buck he had been chasing in southern Ohio with his half-brother Ryan Slopko. Cremeans says he fumbled a couple of seasons ago.

“I knew the deer was in the area for three years from trail camera photos,” Cremeans says. Outdoor living. “My half-brother and I even had a couple of chances to defeat him, but we failed.”

Fortunately, they continued to receive trail camera photos of the male. And this fall, on Oct. 2, Cremeans was set up near a feeder when the deer came into view.

“He stopped 30 yards away and I shot, but the arrow cut off a limb I didn’t see and flew over his back,” says Cremeans, a construction worker in Ross County. “He was a little scared but he didn’t go crazy. I wasn’t going to risk shooting him again that afternoon, so I let him go.

After his missed opportunity, Cremeans says the ball appeared on camera less frequently. He stayed away from the stands and waited for the weather to change. He finally tried again on October 12, but didn’t see any deer.

“Then the temperature dropped 30 degrees from Sunday to Monday,” Cremeans recalls. “On October 14, Columbus Day, it was cool and clear with good wind direction. So I defended him again.”

Cremeans arrived at his stand around 4 pm on October 14 and saw his first small buck within an hour of sitting. Pretty soon there were 10 different males circling the feeder and training. Around 6:20 p.m., he saw the large male emerge from thick cover 75 yards away and head straight for the smaller males.

“He was like a father disciplining young people. He drove them all away,” Cremeans says. “There were still two more small dollars near me, and he turned toward them and approached my stand.”

The great man finally moved behind a tree, allowing Cremeans to draw his bow. He released it when the deer was 32 yards away and slightly dismembered.

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“It was a perfect hit. He ran about 70 yards to the edge of the forest, stumbled a little, and disappeared over a small hill toward the bottom of a stream. “I heard him fall.”

The other bucks were still circling his stand, so Cremeans waited 30 minutes before quietly climbing down to the ground and heading toward his truck. He called his half-brother and, after waiting another hour, the two drove to where the deer had been shot.

“We found a trail of blood, with a hit mark on the lung, and we followed him to where I saw him stagger,” Cremeans says. “At the line of the forest I found my arrow and a large pool of blood. “We found the deer just 10 meters ahead.”

The two brothers loaded the deer into their truck and took it to a nearby barn to prepare it. They didn’t have a scale, but they assume the male weighed between 200 and 250 pounds. Cremeans contacted Buckmasters goal scorer Toby Hughes and also their taxidermist, who believes the deer was 6.5 years old.

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“My buck has 15 scoreable points and Toby scored it Buckmasters style,” Cremeans says. “He measured the dollar at 201 3/8 inches.”

Hughes says the deer has 26 3/8-inch main beams with an inside spread of 18 2/8. The grate also has enormous mass on all of its bases and spikes.