Central Ohio is prime whitetail county, with plenty of farmland and scattered hardwoods. Spencer Hartings, 36, has been bowhunting the region, primarily in Crawford County, for more than 20 years.
Hartings has seen plenty of big deer in that time, and he tagged a 186-inch buck three years ago. But he’d never seen a piebald whitetail deer up close and personal until the afternoon of Oct. 3.
“I’d gotten lots of remote trail camera photos of ‘Ghost’ for several years,” Hartings tells Outdoor Life. “I knew he was around the area, but I’d never actually seen him until that evening.”
He was hunting from a brushed ground blind on a family friend’s farm. Hartings had sweetened the area with mineral blocks, and deer were working it hard by the time Ohio’s archery season opened on Sept. 27.
“There were white oak acorns falling heavily in the field perimeter right near my blind when I got in it that afternoon,” says Hartings, who works for a local gas company. “I had patterned Ghost with remote trail cameras since [before] the season opener – when I couldn’t hunt him.
“I’d learned that if he came to the field in the morning, he’d return that afternoon with a couple of smaller bucks. I got photos of Ghost in the field at daylight on Oct. 3, so I was in my ground blind that afternoon.”
Hartings had stayed out of his hunting spot until conditions were perfect for taking Ghost. And that Oct. 3 afternoon was ideal. The temperature was in the 80s, but in the shaded timber, where his blind was located, it was cooler.
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“I started seeing does in the field that afternoon not long after I got in my blind at 4:30,” he says. “Acorns were dropping, and deer were feeding and moving all around me. At 6:30 Ghost and two other bucks showed up in the field – just like clockwork.”
Ghost started out on the far side of the field with the other deer, and then made its way toward Hartings. It was coming straight at the hunter, which didn’t offer him a good shot with his Hoyt compound bow.
The deer ended up 23 yards from Hartings, with its head down feeding, but it was still facing directly at him. Hartings had to wait nearly two minutes for the buck to turn and offer a decent shot angle.
“He was getting ready to leave, and I figured I better take a quartering-to shot,” Hartings says. “I don’t like that angle, but he was close and I was confident. So, I drew my bow and shot.”
Hartings’ arrow hit Ghost behind the shoulder, angling toward the opposite rear leg of the buck. The 100-grain, 3-blade Megameat broadhead cut the top of Ghost’s heart, pierced both lungs, and buried into the opposite side leg bone.
“He turned and ran, and I watched him fall 60 yards away,” Hartings explained. “I immediately called my good hunting buddy and taxidermist Josh Byerly.”
Byerly met Hastings soon after with an ATV. The two men loaded the estimated 200 pound, 10-point buck, and went back to a shed to carefully dress and skin the rare, piebald deer.
“I’m having a full-body mount made of Ghost, because he is beautiful, and I’ll surely never take another deer like him again,” Hartings says. “He’s been green scored via the Buckmaster method at 142 5/8s inches, and we think he was 3.5-years old.
“I’ve worked so hard for this once in a lifetime buck. I’m so very blessed and so many people have helped me – including the awesome landowners whose property Ghost lived on. They’ve permitted me to hunt there for over 20 years, and I can’t thank them enough.”
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