Have Climber, Will Hunt: A Massive Ohio Non-Typical Buck

“Godzilla” was the nickname they gave the ol’ buck. And he was estimated to be about 6-years old. That’s a long time to live in the woods, fields and forests of rural Adams County, Ohio — an area well known for producing trophy whitetails and popular with hunters, both resident and from far away.

The buck was a well-kept secret among a few other local hunters who knew of the deer but seldom whispered a word about him. The big non-typical lived among the oak and hardwood ridges. This deer lived not far from a buck that’s now a haunting memory, known as the giant “Restitution Buck,” a big main frame 10-pointer that was poached that scored over 197 Boone & Crockett points.

“After the 2021 deer season, I had left my trail camera out,” says Noah Ward. “And when I finally checked it, I had one lone picture of the buck. Later I asked the cousin of a hunter I knew, who hunted in the area, if he had ever got a big wild-looking deer on camera. Well, lo and behold, he had.”

Noah had no idea the giant buck was still around or was even in the area until mid-December of the following year, when the buck again appeared on trail camera.

“That afternoon on December 19, after gun season, I checked my camera and I had two nighttime pictures of him over a corn pile,” says Noah. “A week later I checked my camera again, and I had one picture of him with a time stamp of December 19 at 3:58 p.m. That’s about an hour after I had been there a week earlier.”

Still Noah wasn’t convinced the buck stayed in the area.

Noah, 26 years old, started hunting at a young age. Growing up in rural Adams County presents a lot of opportunities and places to hunt. He mostly hunted during the week-long deer gun season and late muzzleloader season and admits he isn’t a morning person. Noah says he started bowhunting at the young age of 14 but hadn’t had much luck, taking a doe in the fall of 2017. “I just couldn’t seem to get deer within range or find a buck I wanted to shoot,” he explains.

As any bowhunter knows, you need to spend time in the woods to be successful.

“I don’t get a lot of time to hunt during the archery season, as my second shift job at GE Aerospace in Peebles doesn’t leave much time to get into the woods,” Noah says.

“I was never convinced, even today, that I was in the buck’s core area,” says Noah. “I just believed the buck, by chance, just happened to be following that particular ridgeline on his way to somewhere else.”

It’s a hilly area where Noah hunts, with ridgetops of white oak, hickory, poplar and other hardwoods, sometimes with a mix of cedars and occasionally pine. You usually must walk up a hill to get to your spot.

Never expecting to see the big non-typical again, Noah had his sights set on a tall-tined 9-pointer that fall in 2023. He was a regular visitor to the area and a buck he had captured on trail cameras numerous times.

That changed on October 25 when eight nighttime photos of the big non-typical over a 10-minute span appeared on his phone from his cellular trail camera.

“That was the first I saw of the giant buck in over a year,” recalls Noah. “And at that point he became my number one target buck.”

Noah hunted only one other time that fall prior to the most recent trail cam photos, and that time was at a different location. But the Sunday afternoon of November 5 changed everything.

“It was warm and sunny that day, and I was off work. But I decided to stay in and get caught up on some chores around the house,” says Noah. “Around 5:40 that evening my cell phone, which was set on silent, vibrated on an incoming message. It was receiving a trail camera notification.”

The big non-typical he had named “Godzilla” had just shown up at the same place for a second time in 10 days, this time during shooting hours.

“I was excited,” says Noah. “He was back, and he was there for five minutes and three pictures. I never expected to see that buck again.”

As fate would have it, Noah did not have to work the following day and decided to hunt that area Monday evening, November 6.

It was warm that day, around 70 degrees, and windy. Noah recalls the wind gusting up to 20 mph. He didn’t have a stand set up in the area, so he hiked to the ridge to where his trail camera was located with his bow and climbing stand.

“I got back to my spot around 3:00 p.m., and I just had my climber and bow,” says Noah. “Because it was so windy, it took me 20 minutes to decide which tree to get in. It was hot that day, too. Taking into account wind direction, I climbed up a big oak right on the crest of the ridge and got seated. I wasn’t expecting to see any deer until late that evening.”

Noah set his climber so that he was facing a scrape about 40 yards away on the ridge, which had several rubs and other scrapes. It was an open, mature woods that allowed Noah good visibility to see deer from a long way off.

“I wasn’t in a tree very long when I stood up to take a drink, and to my left was a doe standing in the distance,” Noah recounts. “I was high enough up among some branches and leaves, so I wasn’t worried about her seeing me. Shortly after she moseyed away, I heard crashing about 70 yards behind me, and a doe came running out of the woods. She ran right under my stand and stopped about 40 yards away, and then she looked back from where she came. I look in the direction she came from, spotted a small buck and decided to grunt at him. He didn’t pay any attention to my grunting, and they both wandered off in different directions.”

Wearing only a brown t-shirt, Noah slipped on his camo jacket around 4:10 that evening and looked back at the ridgeline behind him. From about 90 yards away, he saw a flash of white and then spotted those massive antlers! “I knew immediately that was the buck,” he says.

“I just wanted proof I saw the deer and got my phone out and took two short videos of the buck walking,” Noah recounts. “I had my phone in one hand and my bow in the other.”

The buck made a slight turn and started slowly walking down the ridge toward Noah’s stand.

“As soon as I knew he was headed my way, I took out my rangefinder and ranged a tree at 28 yards that I was certain he would pass by,” Noah remembers. “When the buck finally got to that tree, he stopped, with only his head behind the tree and broadside. The wind was in my face, and I knew that was my shot.”

A calming ease came over Noah as he drew back his Hoyt Vector 32 RKT bow, his arrow tipped with a 100-grain Rage Hypodermic broadhead. He aligned his sight with the patch of brown just slightly above and behind the buck’s right shoulder and released the arrow. The carbon arrow found its mark, and immediately the giant buck bolted.

“He ran about 80 yards up to this little knoll, and I watched him stumble. He didn’t get back up,” says Noah. “I thought there’s no way this deer died within 100 yards of me. I looked at his antlers through my rangefinder, and he was down. I was so shaken by then I nearly threw up.”

Roughly 20 minutes after first spotting the buck on the hill behind him, Noah climbed down from his stand and walked up to the first buck he ever took with a bow, a big 22-point non-typical he never dreamed he would see again. It was a big, heavy old buck dressing out at 220 pounds at the local processing plant. Later, the buck was officially scored by long-time Boone & Crockett scorer, Bob Wood.

“It’s a great deer,” recalls Bob. “Most guys hunt their whole life and never see or get a shot at a buck like that. I hope Noah knows what he got, because that’s the deer of a lifetime.”

After the required 60-day drying period, Noah’s “Godzilla” buck gross scores 218 3/8, with 41 1/8 abnormal points. After 15 1/8 inches of deductions, the bucks final score was 203 2/8 B&C.

“I am eternally grateful,” says Noah. “I never thought I’d kill a Boone & Crockett buck and especially one of that caliber. I’m still trying to process it all, and I’m still having a hard time believing how it all unfolded.”

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