November 21, 2020 [ O H I O ]
Young Legend BLOG
WRITTEN BY JASON BROWN
HUNT INFORMATION
- Ohio Youth Gun Season
- Dates: November 21-22
- Gun: 350 Legend
- Ammo: Deer Season XP
- Hunter: Gibson Brown
- Dad: Jason Brown
Over the years, Ohio has become my favorite state to hunt. Many factors play into this, like proximity to our home state of Michigan, building history with the deer on our farm, management practices, rolling ridges and deep hollows topped with golden corn fields, quality buck genetics, the Hawkins Family...the list could go on. But when I get down to it I guess, it’s the life events that happen here that make Ohio special. Like the post hunt stories around the fire and cold beers at the skinning shed...an old converted corn crib that is the central location after a successful hunt. It’s our camp’s version of a Michigan buck pole. A dozen times or so in the last four years we’ve met up here, mostly under the cover of darkness, smiling, laughing...living. It’s what comes naturally after a successful buck hunt. These short bursts of time in a special place like the skinning shed each fall are what complete us, what completes me. And passing down these special places and traditions to our kids is a priority I have for my two sons.
We have such an incredible group of guys in Ohio. Chris, Casey and I have shared a million camps together over the years, but this one is special. The fun of this camp are the others who make it even more complete. The Sequin family, Burlap Jeff, the Capper crew…and of course the Hawkins family. It’s been such a joy watching his two boys grow up over the years. Chris, Casey and I are so lucky to have these opportunities available to us and our families. I’ll never be able to thank the Lord enough for what he has blessed us with.
On this particular weekend, I brought my son Gibson down to the farm for the Ohio Youth Gun Season opener. There was much anticipation. This is the second opener Gibson has taken part in, but the first using the 350 Legend, a cartridge we helped launch a few years ago with our partners at Winchester. To have the ability to use a straight-walled cartridge with all the benefits that the 350 Legend offers almost feels too good to be true. It was literally built for states like Ohio and Michigan. Gibson had just taken his best buck on the opener of Michigan’s gun season with it so he was extremely confident.
Two years ago during our first trip down, we had to make a few tough calls on some very solid three year old bucks. Like I said, management is a priority and I prayed we’d have an opportunity at a mature buck, and after a solid morning of rain, we relocated from the upper corn field and worked down to the blind on a food plot we call the intersection where bucks like to cruise during the rut. A break in the rain pulled a hot doe out of the timber. Moments later a mature buck we didn’t have much history with emerged right on her tail. A case of Buck Fever ensued for us both. I was running the camera and trying to assess the situation that transpired rather quickly and probably rushed the whole situation while moving from one window to the other. The buck was so close to our wind line it made me nervous. Even though Gib has taken plenty of deer, turkey and waterfowl...he hadn’t been on a hunt with so much build up before. He had seen all the trail camera pics, heard the stories, watched the episodes...he was ready. So when this was transpiring...we both had our reasons for wanting this to happen so badly.
We flat rushed it, and it was 100% my fault. The hit was back and we both felt sick. Adding to the moment, two more bucks in the 130’s that we would have definitely shot, caught wind of that hot doe and worked into the food plot, at 70 yards for well over 15 minutes. Pure torture. They left the field and so did we. I knew the buck would not survive the shot, so we backed out even with the all-night rain that was ahead of us. The chances of that buck being within 150 yards of where we shot him was much better if we let him lay for at least 12 hours. The replay went on in our heads over and over and over again. What went wrong? If we could just turn back time it would have been so different. But this is where you grow, as a hunter, as a young man…as a Dad. Lessons aren’t easy. They shouldn’t be. We grow from the tough ones. This was my lesson to him all night...and it was also a message to myself, I guess. I felt a lot of guilt for not being more calm in that situation, which I pride myself for. It was a sleepless night.
We woke up to a wet landscape, but the heavy rain somehow missed us…and a new batch was now forecasted to hit at noon. We met Jarod at the property who we lease the farm from. He knows the property better than anyone. We started at the last spot we saw the buck and found blood. We guessed he went west into a deep hollow, full of great places for a buck to die. 45 minutes later we turned up nothing. Our next spot to search was the hollow on the east of the food plot, where the buck had come from. Gib had been telling us he just had a feeling he went in there.
10 minutes later…I found him. I was alone at the time. Gibson was losing hope I could tell...later he said he was sitting on a log when I let them know I found when I hollered to him through the empty timber, “I found him, bud!” We had avoided disaster and got lucky, but I knew that buck would die, a gut shot is a deadly shot almost 100% of the time if you treat it with with patience, and we made the right decisions after the shot happened. We backed out and let him expire, as hard as it was for us both. In the end, he was 150 yards from our blind, tucked up against an old green mossy log in the hollow where he lived his entire life. Like I said, a great place for a buck to die.
This was the culmination of many things. In this blind was where Gibson shed a few tears as a 12 year old after we passed some deer that would be his best ever bucks. As a 14 year old, a foot taller and now a young man, he struggled to hold them back again after making a poor shot on a what would normally be a chip shot for him. He knew he was better than that, and it ate him up. But the vaccine for Buck Fever is experience...and he’s still learning the lessons, and so am I. We’re always learning them as hunters I guess aren’t we? Isn’t that why hunting is so special after all...and in a year when the search for a vaccine turned the world upside down, I pray to the good Lord I never experience one for Buck Fever.
