Ohio Hunter Arrows Remarkable ‘Droop’ Tine Buck

Collin Darrow of Defiance, Ohio has been hunting since he was a kid and has a bunch of solid Buckeye State bucks to show for it. But like many avid deer hunters, Darrow dreamed of having a piece of hunting property he could call his own. In 2022, that dream came true when Darrow went with his father and brother to buy an 85-acre farm in Williams County, Ohio. It was mostly wet river land that seemed to have the potential to be a whitetail paradise.

Darrow and his family spent the first season scouting for whitetails in the new territory. They ran a few surveillance cameras and were pleased with what they saw, especially one of the first money they collected on surveillance cameras. It was a large, but unusual looking buck. From the front, it appeared to have twin drop teeth, but from the side, it looked as if the end of its main spars were bent downwards, giving it a strange, droopy appearance.

“The first night we put the cameras up, he got through the weeds for a shot, and he just looked amazing,” says Darrow. Life in nature. “I realized that he is a super cool deer. He had those two curlers. They weren’t very long yet, but you could tell they were going to grow a few more inches.”

The stand was so unique that Darrow’s neighbors nicknamed the big buck Ed — or ED, which they said was short for “erectile dysfunction.”

Darrow was captivated by the large buck’s unusual antlers, and during 2023 he spent hours watching it.

“During the summer months I would go and watch him every night after work,” says Darrow. I must have videotaped him 30 times in our bean field.”

But Darrow kept losing big bucks during the hunting season.

“I could never seem to catch up to him,” Darrow says. “I passed on a really nice mature buck that went 20 yards under my stand because I was reaching for that tougher buck with the teeth.”

He hunted until the end of the season and never once saw a deer with sagging beams from the stand.

“Every night I got pictures of him,” says Darrow. “I’d go down to my stand in the morning and he’d be in another stand right before shooting the lights, walking on the clear other side of the area.”

When the 2023-24 season ended, Darrow decided to hunt down another dollar for the property. He ended up shooting the same mature buck he missed earlier that season.

Catch up with Ed in 2024

With the hunting season over, Darrow and his family went back to work turning the farm into the whitetail paradise they wanted it to be. They spent the summer months planting food plots, cutting down trees, blocking trails, and creating new ones.

“We did different things for land management. I wanted to leave this deer in this area. We just wanted to make this property better all around, but I specifically worked for this deer. “

As the 2024-2025 deer season approached, a deer began making regular appearances in a bean field on the property. Darrow went there every night to watch him feed when he finished work.

“I was very excited. Every year I’m excited, but this year was a lot more exciting just because I knew there were deer here.”

Flash EHD, epizootic hemorrhagic diseasein the neighboring counties was Darrow on the edge. EHD is a viral, often fatal disease transmitted by biting midges. It can hit the whitetail population hard, and as it seemed to be spreading, Darrow became increasingly worried.

“It affected almost every property in the area, including my cousins ​​and uncles. You would just walk around the area and find dead deer everywhere,” Darrow says. “I was just hoping that one day I wouldn’t go down to the bottom of that river and find a dead buck. He would disappear or not appear on camera for a couple of days and when everything happened with EHD, my head was spinning wondering if he had died.’

Somehow the Darrow farm survived the EHD outbreak intact. When the season finally opened, Darrow concentrated his efforts on hunting around the bean field where the deer regularly fed. For the first five nights of the archery season, he hunted around the field. Although Darrow saw a buck every time he climbed a tree, he could never get close enough to shoot.

“I knew he had four places where he lined the beds around the bean field, but he played the wind so cleverly that I couldn’t get there without bumping into him,” says Darrow. “I was getting off work early and going there thinking I’d tricked him, only for him to get on the pitch. He was about 400 yards away every time I saw him.”

After the beans turned from green to brown in the fall, the deer stopped entering the field. So, Darrow turned his efforts to one of the food plots he had created over the summer.

“I finished work and left (and) I had no hope of seeing him because I wasn’t hunting in the bean field where I saw him every night,” Darrow says. “However, I was lucky.”

Darrow noticed that the slumped deer was traveling with the nine. When this nine entered the meal on October 16, he knew exactly what was coming.

“I lifted my binoculars to make sure and the only thing I saw coming through the weeds were arrows.”

As Darrow put down his binoculars and picked up his Mathews V3, the buck he’d been watching for two years stepped right into the action.

“He stood there like he was looking for me for 30 minutes, but maybe 30 seconds. Then he turned around on the sideboard for 32 yards.”

Darrow drew his bow and sent a 100-grain G5 Megameat mechanical broadhead through both lungs of the deer. He found his bloody arrow and, regaining consciousness, began recruiting reinforcements to help him recover the deer.

Three hours later, Darrow’s entire team, including friends and family members, arrived at the farm to help him.

“My mom even used to come,” says Darrow. “She never comes to track work.”

However, they were unable to find any traceable blood when the team reached the food plot. After searching for some time, Darrow began to lose heart.

“I knew I smoked it. I even heard him fall,” says Darrow. “I just decided to go down to where I heard it crash. I came to a place on the bank of the river, and there was a lot of blood, but no deer.’

It turned out that the goat had fallen right off the 25-foot embankment and was lying right next to the water.

“I felt a rush of excitement and relief, and I started hugging everyone,” says Darrow. “I’ve been excited about deer, but I’ve never been this excited. I’ve shot a lot of big ones, but this one was so unique. I thought I would never have the chance to fight a deer like that again.”

When Darrow came down the river bank and laid his hands on his deer, he realized how big it was. But they still had to figure out how to get the deer up that steep ledge and out of the woods.

“Dad wanted to knock the tractor over and pull it up, and I didn’t want it to tear the bottom. There are still some nice deer out there and I didn’t want to ruin the rest of the season,” says Darrow. “So me and my brother and my buddy dragged him inch by inch up the bank.”

As they lifted the deer up the steep hill, they realized that curled up under the beams had an unexpected advantage.

Read more: A giant spotted deer that made whitetail hunting history

“There were roots sticking out of the bank,” says Darrow. “We pulled it about 5 feet at a time and then hung it from the roots by the prongs. That way we could take short breaks to catch our breath and then pick it up a little more. It really saved us getting him to that side of the river.”

The buck with curved rays scored 13 points and is now at the taxidermist. When asked what he thought the deer would get, Darrow shrugged off the question.

“I honestly don’t care what he scores,” Darrow says. “He’s just a cool deer. I enjoy killing mature bucks, but a score is just a number. I don’t worry about those things.’