James Spears Buck
Story:
Ohio’s No. 2 Typical by Bow
Originally Published: January 2000
By: Edson B Waite, Jr.
Nearly two hours had passed since James Spears had climbed into his treestand, and he’d seen nothing. He was watching a mock scrape and two deer trails that intersected nearby.
“It was pretty cool, and nothing was moving,” James remembers. “I started thinking about leaving for home, but the day seemed right. I decided to stay a little longer.
“About 20 minutes past 9:00, I heard something coming through the brush, and then I saw movement at about 50 yards. It was a buck, and he was following the same trail that I had used to get to my stand. He was downwind of me, and he had his nose to the ground,” James said. “Although I was wearing a scent eliminator, I was hoping the buck would not wind me.”
James watched, unmoving, as the buck continued through the brush. He then lost sight of it.
“I didn’t know where he was headed,” he said. “I decided it was time for action, so I gave a couple of short grunts on my grunt tube. He stopped, and then began to walk toward me. When he came into view again, he was only 30 yards away and moving toward the small clearing where I had prepared a mock scrape with doe urine. The scrape drew his attention. He was looking around for a doe while sniffing and pawing the homemade scrape.
“At that point, he was close enough for a shot, but the angle was not the best … I wanted a good clean shot at him,” James said. “Finally, he raised his head, looked both ways, and then took a few steps to the left, giving me a perfect broadside opportunity at 18 yards.
“I came to full draw and, as the pin settled just behind his shoulder, released the arrow. My mind went kinda blank after that. I didn’t see the arrow hit, but I heard it going through the brush beyond the buck,” he continued. “I thought I had missed, although I couldn’t see how.
“The deer ran about 60 yards, stopped and then started back toward me. He dropped about 35 yards from my tree,” James added. “I thought that I would stay in the stand for 30 minutes, and then I decided that 15 would do. I was out of the tree, however, after waiting only four or five minutes. I just had to see that buck. He was tremendous – the best, by far, that I have seen in nine years of hunting.”
The 165-pound, 3 1/2-year-old buck turned a lot of heads at the local check station.
“Even so, I had no idea how really big this buck was until a few days later, when a close friend urged me to get it scored. He thought that it would be a new state record,” James said.
The typical rack carries a 10-point mainframe with five short stickers – two on each base and one on the right P-3 – totaling 10 1/8 inches. It registers 190 4/8 on the BTR scale, better than it fared with the B&C system, which robbed the antlers of 16 1/8 inches for deductions.
One reason the rack scores so well is the length of the tines. The P-2s tally 16 6/8 and 17 3/8 inches, respectively, and the P-3s are longer than 13 inches apiece.
The Spears buck, which was taken within a few miles of downtown Cincinnati, is the third-largest typical whitetail (BTR) ever to come out of Ohio. It is also No. 2 in the Buckeye State as a typical archery buck, and it sits at No. 4 in the nation for typical bow-harvested deer.