Jeff Kaser Buck
Story:
Jeff Kaser Buck
By: Dan Armitage
A splash behind the teenager alerted him that something was approaching his tree stand – the wrong way.
“The wind was in my face where I sat in the stand,” said Jeff Kaser. “But then I heard a splash in the creek that ran through the woods behind me, and I knew something was coming in. Problem was, it was coming from my right side – my bad side – and from behind,” said the right-handed shooter. “By the time I heard the deer, I knew it was so close that I’d have to be real careful just turning my head to get a look, let alone get off a shot.”
It was about 5:15 p.m. on the evening of Oct. 27 when the 17-year-old senior at Waynedale High School found himself pinned down in his tree stand by one of the biggest bucks ever taken in Ohio.
Kaser was 35 feet above the leaf-littered forest floor – perhaps too high in a stand that had him nervous from the start. Since leaving school at noon and working his afternoon shift at a local pallet plant, the Apple Creek resident had intended his afternoon hunt to be a sort of a “shakedown cruise,” an opportunity to see if he could get to his stand undetected in broad daylight and, once there, have enough light left for a shot at a whitetail.
“I had hunted the stand maybe 15 times already,” he explained. “This was the first time since Daylight Saving Time went out, so I was really just trying to see if I could get into the woods and have time to hunt.”
Last year (2003) was a season of firsts for the Wayne County resident: his first bowhunting season – for which he used an old Bear compound bow (purchased from a friend at work) with a draw weight that he estimated at about 55 pounds – and the first season that he’d hunted close to home.
“I’ve been hunting deer with a shotgun since seventh grade,” said Kaser of his six years’ experience, “but my dad always took me to Jefferson County for gun season. But since I now had a bow and could hunt earlier, I wanted to find a place close to home.”
Kaser got permission to hunt several adjoining farms in nearby northern Holmes County, just across the Wayne County line from Apple Creek. The farm he chose to hunt is owned by the father of one of Jeff’s friends from Waynedale High. The farm includes large stands of woods and grain fields, and has permanent stands set up that are used by the landowner and his son. Several of the stands, including the one Kaser chose to use, had been in place for years, the teenager said. The stand he hunted on Oct. 27 was a favorite of a schoolmate who wasn’t able to hunt that day.
“I got to the landowner’s house a while after 4 p.m., parked and hiked the 200 yards to the stand,” he said. “That was located on the edge of a woodlot that nearly surrounded a small cornfield. A natural funnel formed where the trees and corn come close together at one end,” he explained, “and that’s where the stand had been set up years ago.
“I was facing the corn with the wind in my face. I thought any deer coming from behind would scent me,” said Kaser, who wore scent eliminator and had sprayed raccoon urine as a cover scent in the tree.
“I did have on a scent-free hood,” he said, adding that he was not wearing rubber boots, having instead donned “plain old” hunting boots.
Neither did Kaser call or rattle when he hunted. But he did see plenty of deer.
In token of its height, the stand is nicknamed “the Skyscraper.” Kaser was securely lashed to the tree with a heavy-duty safety harness when the disturbance in the creek alerted him to the presence of “something big” approaching from his rear.
“I got up in the stand and settled in by 4:20 p.m., and nothing much happened for the first half-hour. Then at about 5 p.m., a 4-point I had seen a few times before came out of the woods across the field, with his nose on the ground,” said Kaser. “He came across the field fast, like he was following something, nose down, and disappeared into the woods on my side.
“And then, about 10 minutes later, three does came out of the same place in the woods across the field. Two of them ran back into the woods, but a third just stayed in the corn stubble, just looking around. I was watching her when I heard the splash.”
Kaser figured that he had to risk a look over his right shoulder to see what was steadily approaching his setup, going noisily through a thicket between him and the creek.
“I turned slow and saw antlers coming through the thicket. I knew they had some mass, but couldn’t really see how much of a rack was there. I just knew he was bigger than anything else I had seen and was probably worth a shot if I could get one off without him seeing my movement.”
The next hurdle the 17-year-old had to tackle was the safety harness across his lap, which had noisy metal buckles that he had to unbuckle and gently set down on either side of his legs to keep them from clanging against the stand. “I got the buckles off and stood up, drawing my bow and turning toward the deer in one motion,” said Kaser.
The deer closed to within 40 yards, walking at a steady pace through the thicket angling toward the hunter. “Just before he came out of the brush and into the cornfield, he stopped and looked up, straight at me,” said Kaser. “I was at three-quarter draw and had to just stop and hold still. I don’t know what made him look up at me. I figure he must have heard me draw, because by that time he had moved upwind of me, so he couldn’t have scented me.
“It felt like it was at least a couple of minutes that I had to hold that draw and stand still while he stared at me, but it was probably only 30 seconds. And then he noticed the doe that was still standing out in the field. When he turned to look at her, I finished the draw and held on him. I still didn’t know how big he was – but I was shaking bad!”
Finally, the deer took three steps and was out of the thick stuff and into the field. “I never grunted or did anything to make him stop; I just let go. I saw the arrow hit and thought it struck a bit farther back than where I wanted it to go. He took off along the edge of the woods away from me. I could see blood spurting and knew I had hit him good.
“The buck went across the cornfield and then stopped and looked at the doe, looked right and left, and then walked into the woods across the field.
“That’s when I saw his rack, and how big it was. I listened to him walk back into the trees, and after a few seconds I heard a crash, and knew he dropped. There was some clatter as he kicked, but that stopped pretty soon.
“I got down out of the stand and found my arrow, which had broken off. I pushed the shaft into the ground and walked back to the landowner’s house and told his wife that I had a deer down. I asked her to call her husband for help. She called him and he said, ‘This better be good – I’m up in a tree hunting right now!’
“He came back home, and he told me to wait a while longer, just to be sure, and we sat around until 7:30 p.m. That was the longest wait of my life!” recalled the high school senior.
“Two neighbors came over, too, and we used flashlights to go back to the spot. I had to climb back up into the stand and get my knife and stuff. I was in such a hurry after the shot that I left all my gear up in the stand! Then we went searching and found the deer where I heard it go down.
“I noticed right away that it had a drop tine and what turned out to be 27 points. It looked awesome.”
“Awesome” to the tune of 250-plus Pope & Young points, the green score Kaser’s non-typical rack was given by official scorers when he had the deer checked in the next day. The antlers went straight into a safety deposit box at a local bank, and the carcass went to a taxidermist to prepare for a full-body mount.
After the 60-day drying period, Kaser’s deer was awarded a final score of 244 by official scorers from the Buckeye Big Buck Club and Boone and Crockett, making it the largest non-typical buck taken in Ohio during the 2003-04 season, the second-largest deer ever taken in Holmes County and one of the largest ever taken by a hunter in Ohio.