Early in the afternoon on Nov. 16, the Mast family parked their truck on a hilltop on a small farm in central Ohio’s Knox County. It was opening day of the state’s youth firearms season, and the four Masts split into pairs, each with one youth hunter and one adult.
“I was paired with my 15-year-old daughter, Avery, while my 21-year-old son Vincent was with my other daughter, Alea, who’s 17,” Michael Mast tells Outdoor Life.
Both teams were hoping for a chance at a giant buck with an unusual set of drop tines. The two girls had seen the buck holed up in a tangled thicket with a doe two weeks prior, and they even recorded a video of the deer.
“They watched him for two hours,” says Michael, a 46-year-old carpenter and father of six. “The buck was guarding a doe in the thicket, and at least four other bucks were trying to get to her.”
The Masts walked along a field edge together and then headed in different directions. Vincent and Alea went to a ground blind near the hedgerow where the girls had spotted the buck weeks earlier. Michael and Avery kept walking across the hayfield, and they set up in another ground blind roughly 200 yards away.
At 3:30 p.m., Alea looked out across the hayfield and spotted the buck roughly 400 yards away, Michael says. The buck was cruising and looking for does in the tangled hedgerows. Vincent grunted loudly to the buck. It turned immediately and started working toward them across the field.
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“The buck got to about 120 yards, and Alea had a shot,” Michael explains. “But there were houses 150 yards beyond the buck, so she couldn’t shoot because it wasn’t safe. The buck then skirted the field and disappeared behind some trees.”
Alea and Vincent had the wind in their favor, so they decided to leave the blind and stalk the deer, which was now out of sight. The brother and sister figured the buck would keep checking the hedgerows for does, so they headed to a likely a spot and waited.
“They got to a hedgerow near a picked corn field, and saw the buck 400 yards away,” says Michael. “Vincent started rattling hard, and the buck turned and started trotting toward them.”
Within five minutes, the buck had come out of the corn field and crossed a dirt road and was heading in their direction. It finally stopped at just under 100 yards and was quartering away from Alea. She aimed her Winchester chambered in .350 Legend and shot once.
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The 150-grain bullet hit the buck through the heart. The deer ran and dropped just 50 yards away.
“It was 4 p.m. when I heard Alea shoot, and I started texting and calling them right away,” Michael says. “When we finally walked up to them and saw the buck, we had a big celebration right there in the field.”
The buck has 14 total points, with five distinct drop tines, two of which are really mainbeams that curve down The inside antler spread is almost 19 inches, with 24-inch main beams and thick, 5-inch bases. Michael says they haven’t tried scoring the buck yet, but it’s a trophy regardless of the number. He says they’re getting a shoulder mount done.
“We’re going to hang her drop-tine buck mount in our home. We’ve got a place for it that looks out onto our homestead where we regularly see deer on our property.”
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