Giant 192-inch Typical Ohio Archery Whitetail Deer

After four failed in range encounters with a good Ohio buck in 2024, Kane Godfrey was justifiably upset. Now, he says, “I really messed that up!”, then quickly adds, “Thank God!”

His story is filled with other twists and turns too, like spotting the deer from his deer stand for the first time, when it was standing in traffic. Then again, as he was taking another hunter into the same patch of woods later in the season to get his first doe, the buck showed up on a cell camera pic, prompting Kane to tell his buddy, “We aren’t going there… You’re not shooting that deer!” 

The rest of 2024 was a series of bad memories and failed hunts. But the time between then and the 2025 season gave him a chance to recover, while the buck blew up into an absolute giant.

Kane turned adversity into advantage in the new season, waiting on the first cold front to go after the deer and correctly predicting the change of weather would have bucks on their feet. When he was busted by several younger bucks on that hunt, he chose to find a better spot.

After scouting and locating the only tree that would work with his climbing stand in the new area, his next hunt was interrupted by a local farmer who used that exact time to spread manure. All the activity killed any chance of success then, but Kane was not to be discouraged. 

“I was back in there the following afternoon”, he states. “And he showed up an hour and a half later.” The buck was making his way through cover cautiously, when Kane spotted him just 60 yards away. “I’m sure he was looking for the farmer from the day before”, Kane adds. “He had two trails he could walk and chose the one that led right to me.”

Kane had ranged a patch of weeds at 20 yards, as a place he could draw his bow, but the buck stood out of range for ten long minutes then tried to bulldoze his way through a Honeysuckle thicket. “He kept getting his antlers hung up”, Kane adds. “Then after trying two different places, he turned and came on in, stopping at 18 yards.”

The broadhead took him cleanly through both lungs, and the buck high-tailed it into the adjacent CRP field.

“I knew it was over, so I reached out to my friend, Mason, asking him to come assist in the recovery”, Kane finishes.

The 6 ½ year old buck’s rack leaves nothing on the table, with huge thick tines and long beams joined with heavily beaded bases and long G1s… The tape says 192 7/8ths, scored by BuckMaster, completely explaining why Kane is happy he didn’t get him last year!

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